The Sword of Damocles
by Lauralot
Summary: How does the Joker work through his own pain? By inflicting it on others. Sequel to The Doctors and the Nurses They Adore Me So.
1. Hanging Over My Head

AN: This is a sequel to my fic _The Doctors and the Nurses They Adore Me So. _It's not absolutely necessary to have read the first fic to understand this one, and I'll provide a brief recap in the opening chapter, but I would recommend reading the first. A short summary: The Joker went to Arkham after the events of TDK and became a target of abuse by the orderlies, which cumulated when one orderly killed a dog he cared for and the Joker retaliated by killing the orderly and breaking out, bringing Jonathan Crane with him.

To those who have read TDATNTAMS, I'm sorry this sequel took so long to get started! The transition to summer took much longer than it should have, and completely sapped my writing inspiration/motivation.

**Note: **This is a story about an angry, bloodthirsty Joker out for revenge. It will be violent and unpleasant, and if that isn't your cup of tea, this won't be something you'll enjoy.

* * *

His hands were bleeding.

The Joker laid the roses on the ground. There were a dozen in all, white as bone. "White as snow" might have been the normal—the _boring_—expression, and among the type of degenerates he attracted, "white as cocaine" would be more fitting, but Gilda would have appreciated bone more. Dogs, last the Joker had checked, did not use cocaine—or didn't live to tell the tale if they managed to get into it—and while a house pet with a nice warm bed to return to might have the time of its life romping around a snowy yard, the stuff was less fun and more potentially fatal to those without a dog house over their heads. No, Gilda would have preferred bone.

He should have gotten her a bone while she was still alive.

The Joker pulled his hands away, blood squishing between his skin and the lining of the glove. There wasn't enough to cause concern, not yet. It wouldn't be a hindrance unless he became lightheaded or heard angelic voices compelling him to go toward the bright light, and given that the cuts, while plentiful, were all about as shallow as Arkham Asylum's interest in its patients' recovery, that wasn't about to happen any time soon. For damage inflicted by holding shards of glass in his hands and sawing through an orderly's fingers with them, it was so mild it was almost humorous. Almost. It just figured. Murdering Hadley had been completely unsatisfying on an emotional level, so why should it have provided any pleasure through pain?

_I should have killed him slower._

There was no sense in dwelling on it now. No sense in dwelling on it at _all_; his anger and hatred were akin to his own personal raincloud, and the more he contained it within, the worse the downpour became. The only solution was to dissipate the force by directing it onto others, which had the added benefit of providing entertainment along with the catharsis. People would die until he was satisfied. That was a given.

But not at the moment. Here and now, the only thing that mattered was paying his last respects. That, and not getting caught.

He'd left the taser with Jonathan Crane, and he'd left the scarecrow with his back alley doctor friends.

Looking back, that hadn't been his wisest decision. At the time, he'd been distracted. Between the escape, the showy but painfully unsatisfying murder, stowing away in Hugo Strange's car and beating the doctor senseless against the dashboard, and convincing his seamstress to let him back into her apartment despite the time he'd tried to run her fingers through her sewing machine, it had been easy to forget that he hadn't reclaimed Sparky from Jonathan. Come to think of it, Jonny might well have left the taser in the car. The Joker hadn't seen it in the apartment, unless Jonathan had been storing it in a pocket.

And if that was the case, he'd hopefully remembered to turn it off first. Not that electrocution wasn't hilarious, but if the scarecrow sparked the straw in his ass or crotch, the Joker wanted to be there to see it.

"I'm sorry I didn't get to say goodbye while you were still here."

Where was Gilda now? What did the asylum do with puppies that had been brutally murdered by orderlies to get back at the patients? The Joker imagined they'd called Animal Control, or whoever dealt with road kill in the city. But then what? Was the body cremated? Buried? Used by veterinary students or ground up into pet food? Wherever the body was, even if he could track it down, it didn't matter. That wasn't Gilda, not anymore. Just a reminder of what she had been and what Hadley had done.

Yes, the Joker definitely should have killed him slower.

"You were the only thing that kept me sane, Gilda, you know that?" Christ on a _bike_, that sounded sappy. It was like something from a made-for-TV movie, and the only thing those were good for was giving him an excuse to empty one of his guns into the television. But saccharine as it was, it was true. Gilda was—had been—the only one in the asylum who hadn't been analyzing him, beating him, correcting his grammar, or committing any other number of grievous, punishable by death offenses. She was the only one who hadn't scorned or shrank back from him and she was the one spot of color in his painfully monochrome life in Arkham. Until Hadley—an orderly, an _ordinary _person who shouldn't have had the ability to inflict this kind of pain—had strangled her because beating the Joker didn't produce the desired effect and the bastard wanted to twist the knife as deep as he could.

It didn't matter how slowly the Joker _had _killed him; nothing could have atoned for this loss.

"I wanted to be able to take you with me when I left. I should have done it sooner." Life in a shack populated with criminals and mental patients wasn't ideal, but it was miles ahead of being homeless and getting one square meal a day from an orderly threatened into feeding her. At least with the Joker's henchmen he could make it perfectly, lethally clear that his dog was off limits to anyone who wanted to avoid being disemboweled. "I never thought anyone would be sick enough to turn this onto _you._ I'm sorry."

Apologizing wasn't something he made a habit of. He couldn't remember the last time the words had left his lips without being tinged with sarcasm or outright deceit. It ought to feel strange now, but it didn't. Gilda was worthy of his apology, as she was worthy of the dozen roses.

This time, he'd been recognized when he'd gone to collect the flowers.

Well, in the interests of accuracy, the Joker wasn't sure if he'd been recognized or if the cashier at The Stalk Market had just decided that a man with drying blood on his face was bad news. The Chelsea grin and the purple suit would indicate the former, but that might be putting more faith in the observational skills of the Gothamites than the citizens deserved. Whatever the reason for the panic, the woman behind the counter hadn't liked what she'd seen. His first trip to a florist's shop earlier in the evening when he'd retrieved Abigail's apology rose likely would have gone the same if the man operating the cash register hadn't been geriatric and developing cataracts. This time, he hadn't been so lucky and found himself on the receiving end of a shotgun.

Of course, shotguns tended to be less effective when their wielders didn't know what the hell they were doing, and as the nice lady trying to shoot him didn't realize there was a safety directly in front of the trigger guard, it had been depressingly easy to wrestle it out of her hands and make it the first item in his arsenal. The Joker did feel a twinge of regret at stealing Gilda's memorial roses—more because it seemed disrespectful than because it was illegal—but to his credit, he had tried to make an excuse about a sudden death in the family and forgetting his wallet before the screaming and attempted shooting started, and that was the best he could do in such circumstances. Besides, Gilda must have broken into a few garbage cans in her time on the streets. She would understand.

She would understand that he'd had to take the woman's car as well. He couldn't head back to Arkham on foot, after all. Not after his unpainted face had been broadcast nationally during his trial. Between that and the purple suit, someone was bound to recognize him and he didn't feel much like fighting his way through to pay his respects. Not tonight. He wasn't sure Gilda would agree with knocking the woman out and leaving her unconscious on the floor, but it was out of respect for the dog that he hadn't just killed her to tie up a loose end.

"You were my only real friend here, puppy." The Joker patted the ground as though he were stroking her fur. As though he had a real grave to say goodbye at, instead of a patch of grass by the edge of the asylum yard, where he'd found her body. "And I don't make friends easily."

The police had arrived by the time he returned with the roses.

It was to be expected. Incompetent as Arkham Asylum was at _everything_, from curing patients to protecting them from abuse to keeping puppies from being strangled, even they must have noticed that two orderlies were missing and two more were lying dead in the security room. Maybe Linda had woken up and managed to free herself from her bindings enough to call for help. Maybe Ruthie had dropped by to make sure the Joker wasn't trying to kill himself and raised the alarm. The method of discovery or what the police had discovered so far wasn't important. What mattered is that they were there, that some of Gotham's finest had been positioned outside of the asylum, and that he'd have to make his way past them to say his goodbyes.

Luckily for him, the woman at the flower shop had all the equipment at hand to survive in Gotham City, even if she didn't have the brains to use it correctly. In a city like this, everyone with an IQ over that of a turnip—at least, those who weren't living in the Palisades—followed the Boy Scout motto and came prepared. Especially in the Narrows. He'd checked the trunk before he'd taken off. There was a prepaid cell phone in the glove compartment. There was a crowbar and a gallon of water, in case of carjacking or kidnapping and subsequent imprisonment in the trunk. There was a jack and spare tire as well and, most importantly, a gas can. And the car was equipped with a cigarette lighter.

The Joker wasn't sure what he'd done to get on Lady Luck's good side, but it must have been spectacular to keep him in her good graces for all these years.

From there it had been a simple exercise in fire setting. Make sure the car is a far enough distance away that you'll be able to set up the situation without detection, but not far enough for the flames to be missed, douse the interior and exterior with gasoline, introduce the lighter, and run for cover. Of course, the flames weren't as impressive as in the movies, especially since this was only a fire, not an explosion, but aesthetics took a back seat to function tonight. The police ran to investigate, the shotgun took care of them—and the orderly at the gate booth—before they could radio for help, and their weapons were added to his arsenal.

Which left him open to make his farewell, and armed in case anyone else should mosey on out. The Joker considered that highly unlikely. They were probably running inside like chickens with their heads cut off in search of his handy dandy hiding place—after all, no one but Strange could confirm that he'd left the premises, and Strange was currently unconscious and probably concussed—or for Zachary, Hadley, and Jonny. And that left him with all the time he needed.

Now if only he knew what to say.

"I could bring you Hadley's femur or something," he offered. Hadley deserved it. It wasn't as if Gilda would be there to gnaw on it, but if anyone deserved to have his grave remains desecrated and used as spiritual puppy chow, it was Hadley. But no, Gilda wouldn't have wanted that. Starved as she was when they first met, she'd never nipped at the Joker or even at the orderlies trying to chase her away. She'd barked almost as often as she'd breathed, but never in a bad-natured way. Just to say "Hey, I'm a puppy and I want to be your best friend forever!" She wouldn't have wanted to chew on a person, no matter how evil that person was.

She probably wouldn't want the Joker inflicting pain on the other orderlies involved in the nightly beatings, or anyone else who crossed his path either, but he couldn't please everyone all the time.

"I hope the last few weeks of your life were happy. Before…Hadley." She'd still been dirty and infected with lice and fleas and probably worms after Zachary started feeding her, but at least she wasn't emaciated. And really, lice and fleas weren't that bad. He knew from experience. "And I hope you didn't suffer for long."

He didn't say goodbye. Partly because he wasn't sure _what _to say—he couldn't imagine telling her he'd tortured a man to avenge her would make her tail wag—but mostly because his way out had presented itself.

Steven. The Joker didn't know if that was his last name or his first name. Either way, it was irrelevant. What _was _relevant was that he was one of the orderlies that made nightly visits to the Joker's cell and made sure that the clown's ribs were on a close, personal basis with their batons. Even more relevant than that was that the man was currently slipping out a side door, presumably having realized that the most dangerous patient was out of the box and out for revenge, and rushing for the parking lot as though he had a clown at his heels.

He did. He just hadn't noticed yet.

Technically, the Joker didn't need to stow away in a car again. He had the officers' keys and the idea of cruising the city aimlessly in a police car _was _tempting. Playing with the siren, making some false reports over the radio, maybe even conducting a few citizen's arrests. It would be fun on any other night. But not now. Now, he was pissed. Too pissed to enjoy it, too pissed to enjoy anything but tearing someone's throat open. Besides, eventually someone would radio in demanding to know why he'd left his post, and in a mood like this, his skill in deception and putting up with boring conversations was about on par with Han Solo's. He'd rather not have Gotham's finest on his back all night.

Besides, he'd managed to reopen the cuts on his hands when he'd taken the shotgun, and before that, he'd exposed the open wounds to Hadley's blood. The Joker had no way of knowing how many pathogens—if any—were contained there, but given that he'd gotten so up close and personal in the man's fluids that he'd had to intubate the orderly to keep him from choking on his own gore, chances were he'd caught _something. _It had only occurred to the Joker that he should have had Adrian disinfect the cuts after he'd left the apartment. It was in his best interest not to grab onto a steering wheel and irritate the wounds further. And that wasn't even taking into account all the hard labor he'd put in tearing Hadley apart with broken glass, and the emotional sucker punch he'd been subjected to with Gilda's murder. No, he deserved a break today, so Stephen would have to serve as his chauffeur.

The Joker pulled a Glock pistol he'd scavenged from the cops off of his belt and pressed it into Stephen's back. The other hand covered the orderly's mouth before he could scream.

"You're gonna undo your bel_t_. You're gonna drop your radio, and your nightstick, and everything else, and you're _not _gonna fight with me while you do, _got it_?" He pressed the barrel harder into the man's back, and Steven's struggles ceased. "Do anything else with your hands, or try to scream, and you'll bleed from places you didn't know had blood vessels."

And just like that the belt was off. It occurred to the Joker that if he ever needed a second job, he ought to look into directing strip shows. He lowered his hand from Stephen's mouth. "Got anything else?"

"Oh God—p-please don't—"

"It's a yes or no question, unless you, uh, _want _me to fill your spine with lead."

"I—I have a k-knife—"

"Correction." The Joker held out his free hand in Steven's line of sight, beckoning. "_I _have a knife."

A shaking hand disappeared into a pocket. It reemerged a moment later and dropped the knife into the Joker's gloved palm. A buck knife, not particularly elegant or high quality, but it looked sharp enough, and blades were the instruments he'd missed most of all in his captivity. "That'll do, Steve. That'll do."

"_Christ_—"

"You can call me Joker."

"Please—I'm s-sorry—"

He could feel the blood boiling and bubbling in his veins. The Joker imagined that under the gloves, his cuts were steaming. Steven wasn't sorry. He didn't know what sorry _was. _Not yet. He was getting an inkling now, but he wouldn't fully understand it until his own knife was embedded in his skin. The Joker gave a loud, exaggerated yawn. "Sorry. When I get bo_red, _I fall asleep. I get those jerks though, where, uh, your muscles tighten up before you're all the way out? My fingers, especially." He pushed again with the Glock. "Those twitch like cra_zy_. Sure would be a shame if—"

"I'm sorry!" It wasn't quite a shout. Just enough of a distinction to allow Steven to keep his spine. "I'll do wh-whatever you w-w-want!"

"Good. Because otherwise, my finger might sli_p_."

It wasn't his finger that slipped, but it his whole hand, and it wasn't on the trigger. Rather, it was on the knife that just happened to slice across Steven's throat, and it didn't slip until the ride was over. But to give credit where credit was due, Steven _did _manage to be interesting all the way up until his car was safely parked in his garage.

Well, to be truthful, he'd been boring for the last five minutes before they reached Steven's house, but the Joker imagined his wife would appreciate knowing he'd gotten home in one piece.

* * *

AN: The sword of Damocles refers to a Greek legend in which a courtier by the name of Damocles asked a tyrant what his life was like. The tyrant responded by letting Damocles experience a day with all of the luxuries and comforts of royalty—but with a sword hanging by over his head by just a horse's hair. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," and all that. Colloquially, it can refer to either unsecure power, or simply a situation where you know the other shoe is about to drop.

It's also a song from _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=x7AoGZ7_HOs (For those who haven't seen the musical, the audio track contains a character having a yelling fit in the background that won't make any sense to you). To those who read TDATNTAMS and are wondering why I didn't do a music quote at the top, I've decided not to do that this time around, because I pretty much exhausted my knowledge of music with the last fic.

There's a flower shop in Seattle called "The Stalk Market." I just had to steal a name that great.

In _A New Hope,_ when Han and Luke have infiltrated the Death Star to rescue Leia, there's a bit where Han tries to pretend to be an Imperial soldier over the radio, but ends up failing at bluffing and just shooting the communicator, calling it a "boring conversation anyway": www. youtube. com/ watch?v=uqyLA74gmPQ

"That'll do, [pig], that'll do" is a line from _Babe._


	2. Roommates

AN: Remember at the end of TDATNTAMS when Abigail begins sketching a new costume for the Scarecrow? Well, two awesome readers have drawn their rendition of that costume. The first is by Toccata No. 9, which you can view here: someonecertainly. deviantart. com/ #/ d2qpkz0

The second (with added unicycle!) is by MadHatter13, and is here: maddhatter13. deviantart. com/ art/ Riding-A-What-162645126

While we're on the subject of art, there's also one I want to show off by XxXUnlockedDiaryXxX, for my earlier fic, _Act Like We Are Fools._ It's inspired by the Joker's line "It's a polygamous kingdom. I can have as many princesses as I want," and you can view it here: xxxunlockeddiaryxxx. deviantart. com/ #/ d2otc4o

Sorry for the delay in the second chapter; all my relatives and friends of the family seem to be graduating high school this year, and it's been one party after another. I've also somehow been recruited to present a scholarship at a ceremony on Friday, despite the fact that it's to a student I don't know, going into a field I don't study, and attending a different college. And no, it's not even a scholarship I had. Life is strange.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"His pulse is kinda wonky."

Jonathan Crane was drifting in the state between sleep and consciousness, and he felt no pressing desire to alter that. Unless someone had pried around in his central nervous system and destroyed his perceptions of his own body since last he'd been awake—even an idea like _that_ couldn't faze him at the moment—he didn't seem to be hungry, and his muscles didn't seem atrophied due to lack of movement, so there was no sense in opening his eyes and depriving himself of rest. He didn't sleep much anymore, what with the nightmares of bats and birds and being held down while his body was torn apart and tigers lurking in the halls of Arkham Asylum. And that was without mentioning the way the shadows in his cell seemed to converge at the corner of his vision whenever he was fatigued, just waiting for him to close his eyes so they could proceed with whatever horrible thing converging shadows did with their time. The body needed rest, but his sleep was often hardly restful. So, having reached the eye of the storm, he felt no desire to swim back toward more turbulent waters.

Besides, in the waking world, someone's hand was on his wrist and that was never a good sign.

"Wonky as in irregular or wonky as in fast?"

Another voice. Jonathan currently lacked the higher brain functioning to tell if it was male or female, but he could differentiate enough to know that it wasn't the same as the voice that had mentioned his pulse, which indicated that he was, however slowly, waking up. And that, for reasons he was currently blissfully unaware of, seemed every bit as bad as the nightmares.

"As in fast. I think it's regular. Do you want me to get the stethoscope?"

The first voice again. Jonathan couldn't place it. Of course, people's voices tended to be as slippery as his perception of reality ever since the Batman had poisoned him and he'd been too preoccupied with tearing through the city on horseback and being tased in the face to supply himself with the antidote before the brain damage became permanent, so it was entirely possible that he did know the speaker. Likely, even. It wasn't as if Arkham was brimming with prospective employees, after all, and the ones that were there tended to stay no matter how horrible the situation became.

The hand was still on his wrist, fingers at the pulse point. That indicated a nurse. That, or the Batman.

"No. Get his blood pressure first."

If he had to hazard a guess, Jonathan would say the second voice was male. He couldn't remember any male nurses, not that had ever worked with him personally—save for his days on the Arkham staff, and even then he'd strived to keep professional relations as impersonal as possible—and it didn't sound like any doctor he knew, though he couldn't say for sure. An orderly, perhaps, but Jonathan couldn't fathom why a nurse would take advice from an orderly, unless the asylum had undergone a coup while he slept. While he was at it, "wonky" wasn't a medical term he'd ever heard of, and the blankets over him felt much thicker and less worn than the bedspreads of Arkham.

"Where's the cuff at?"

_Something happened last night. _The thought was abrupt, so much so that he wasn't sure if it was a product of his own mind or an implantation from a nearby Jedi Knight. Something _had _happened last night though, something major, and Jonathan knew he ought to wake up and remember what it was, or at least work out why he seemed to be in a different cot than the ones in the infirmary, being examined by different and questionable employees.

He really didn't want to put forth the effort.

"I've got it." A third voice, louder than the other two. Jonathan's eyes opened involuntarily.

The world before him was fuzzy. Either the strangers he found himself with had removed his glasses or he had done it himself before falling asleep. And they _were_ strangers; he couldn't make out many details beyond that there were two figures over him—the third must be farther back—that were both female, white, and brunette, but he could tell that they weren't wearing scrubs, which meant they weren't Arkham nurses, even if one of them was binding a blood pressure cuff around his arm. Jonathan could only make out the ceiling clearly, and that was made of plaster, not the tiles used in the asylum.

"Hey, he's awake."

"Morning, Scarecrow."

"Who are you people?" It only occurred to him after he'd spoken that if this was some sort of hostage situation, he shouldn't let his captors know that he was bewildered. Oh well. Maybe he hadn't actually spoken. That was something he struggled with ever since the poisoning, not being able to tell his thoughts from his words.

"We're the Aristocrats," said the woman on the right. She had very short hair and no indoor voice.

"What?"

"Don't confuse him, Ani." That was the woman on the left. Her hand was moving closer to his face, holding something between her fingers. He turned away, not wanting to lose his eyes or be injected with a microscopic tracking device or whatever she had in store, but her hand followed—"Don't you want these?"—and he felt plastic and wire graze over his skin as the world slid into focus. His glasses. "You don't remember us?"

They were in their early twenties. They were also twins. The one on his left had hair that reached past her shoulders, dangling down in his face. It reminded him of an octopus's tentacles, though he wasn't sure why. The twin on the right had short, pixie style hair and a shirt decorated with enough differently-colored stripes to make him feel ill. She also had hearing aids, unlike her sister. Jonathan wanted to touch them to be sure that he wasn't hallucinating, to confirm that they really were turquoise hearing aids and not some odd and impractical fashion trend he'd had the fortune to miss during his commitment. But she was squeezing the blood pressure cuff on his right arm while the long-haired twin held his other shoulder, and he was too confused to put forth the effort to shove them aside.

But now that she mentioned it, there was something familiar about them. Jonathan recalled cookies, socks, and something about patriotism. If it hadn't been a dream.

"I'm Abigail," said the long-haired twin. "That's Anika. And that's our brother, Adrian." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, indicating out of his line of sight. That would be the male voice, then. "You came here last night with Jackie, remember?"

_Jackie. _Again, that feeling that he ought to remember something, but a total blank when he tried to bring the information forward. Maybe he was overmedicated. Or spectacularly drunk, though he couldn't remember drinking, and if he'd imbibed enough alcohol to suffer total amnesia of last night's events, surely he'd be able to feel the hangover. He'd know a Jackie once in Georgia, a juvenile delinquent who'd found it funny to let his dog—a mix between a Great Pyrenees and something like a mountain lion, and big enough to make Cujo look like a toy poodle—chase after the class nerd. Jonathan had lost count of the times the dog had nearly bit through his Achilles tendon—

_The dog._ Those two words brought the memories back with all the force of a rock to the head, something else that he'd experienced all too often in childhood. They'd had been talking about a dog yesterday morning in the infirmary. They being Ruth Adams, the Joker's psychiatrist, and Teresa, the nurse who wouldn't take his medical advice and was afraid of him, despite her perfectly awful job of trying to hide it. No one could understand that his research was meant to help humanity. And no one could understand that killing that orderly—killing _it_—was completely justified and could hardly be considered a crime.

The Joker had been there too, hyperventilating as Ruth had carried on in what she presumably thought was a whisper, though it was actually at the decibel level of a small, irritated elephant, about how the Joker's dog was dead and he was in a state of shock and on and on, as if Jonathan wasn't sitting right there trying to read, and as if her voice wasn't loud enough to raise the dead. She needed to show more restraint. Arkham Asylum was hardly capable of defending itself against a zombie outbreak. Eventually they'd taken the Joker away and he'd be allowed to return to _Ulysses _without interruption, but the Joker had returned that night, covered in blood and promising him new clothing if he'd followed the clown in his escape.

Which led to his current situation. Presuming that his memories were reliable—and given the way walls and floors and furniture shifted and twisted around him these days, he couldn't be sure—this was the apartment the Joker had led him to, and unless Gotham had undergone an invasion of the body snatchers overnight, these were the siblings that owned the place. And, for reasons unknown, referred the Joker as "Jackie."

He didn't see the Joker.

"His blood pressure's one thirty-nine over eighty-six," the short-haired one—Anika—reported, unstrapped the cuff from his arm. "That's not dangerous yet, is it?"

"No, but it's not good either." Adrian was directly over him now. He looked like his sisters, but taller and slightly broader, with more angular, masculine facial features, and curly hair where the twins' was straight. He reached between them and took Jonathan's shoulder, and the room went spinning.

"Jonathan? Are you all right?"

There was something against his back, and the spinning slowed. Jonathan stared at the hand on his shoulder, using it as a focal point as he bit back a wave of nausea. A couch. That was what he felt. He'd been lying on a pull-out couch, not a bed, and the twins had been sitting on the mattress beside him, as Adrian was kneeling in front of him now. "I'm dizzy." _Dizzy. _He mouthed it again. After the poisoning, the part of his mind that confirmed he'd actually spoken seemed to flicker on and off, and he often found himself compelled to reaffirm his words.

"Do you have a headache?"

Jonathan began to shake his head before he caught himself. The dizzy spell was fading now, and he wasn't going to risk sending it on another spin. "No."

"Is your vision blurred?"

The strips of accent wallpaper seemed to be waving against the paint on the walls, but when Jonathan blinked, they stopped moving, and besides, that was normal for him. "No."

_Adrian's a doctor. _Someone—Abigail, he thought—had mentioned it the night before. He had to be overmedicated, to have forgotten so much. That, or under-medicated. Or at Death's door, given the intent look the doctor was fixing him with and the nervous way Anika was twisting the blood pressure cuff she still held. Jonathan ought to be concerned himself, between the spinning room and the blood pressure verging on hypertension, but at the moment he had actual clothing instead of the asylum jumpsuit, he wasn't locked in a cell or confined to the infirmary, and all he wanted was to finish his book without interruption. Wherever his book was.

Abigail shifted on the mattress so that one of her feet was dangling toward the ground. "Do you want me to get the ateno-"

"Not yet. The dizziness could be caused by his blood pressure." Adrian moved his hand from Jonathan's shoulder to the man's forehead, much to his displeasure. Yes, he might be suffering from a serious medical condition, but that didn't give people the right to touch him without asking. "But it could be withdrawal. Or any number of things. Jonathan, do you know what medications you were on at Arkham?"

His eyes narrowed. What sort of idiot did these people take him for? He was a doctor, with or without a license, and no doctor would let himself be drugged without information on the drug first. "Yes."

A pause. The siblings shared a glance among themselves, as though he wasn't sitting right there.

"What were they?" Anika asked once they were quite finished with degrading him.

"Where's the Joker?" He hadn't intended to ask that. It had jumped from the back of his mind to his lips as he was preparing to make a smart remark—why should they get answers when they'd done nothing but touch him without permission and treat him as like an invalid lacking in higher brain functioning—but now it was the only thing he could focus on. The Joker was the one who brought him here. The Joker was the one with ties to these people, and the Joker didn't seem the type to sit around minding his own business when there was anyone sick or injured in his vicinity. He was a predator, waiting for any crack in the armor so that he could pounce and tear his prey to shreds. That, or point and laugh. Most wild animals didn't do that, but it was the same principle.

"Do you know the names of the medications?" It was Abigail that time. They were making an awful attempt to distract him, which didn't bode well, and even worse, it was patronizing. If he trusted his ability to kick without making the world move around him like a carousel again, and if he could move his legs that far without the blankets hindering him like a large, heavy net, then his feet would have made contact with the twins' heads by now, and then moved together to nail Adrian in the face. Or something like that. They didn't seem worth the effort, and he didn't want to consider the backlash, but they were treating him like a sick child and they needed to suffer for their presumption.

Still, there wasn't much he could do in his current condition, and the more he thought about it, the less beneficial the high blood pressure and the tilting of the room seemed to be. When was the last time he'd had the antipsychotics? He couldn't remember when they'd last been administered in the infirmary, or if Linda had given him the nightly dose before the Joker knocked her unconscious and tied her up. Talking to these people, however degrading and unsatisfying as it was, was probably his best option. "Lopril. Five milligrams, twice a day." _Twice a day. _"Two milligrams of Ativan, and ten milligrams of Haldol. Those were three times a day."

There he faltered, not because he was unsure of what he said, but because he was unsure of what he remembered. It seemed as if that was all of it, but hadn't he been on a sleeping pill? No, they must have stopped that once he'd adjusted to the antipsychotics, or the birds tapping at the window wouldn't have kept him up at night. Still, there must have been something else. For everything that was murky and muddled in his mind's eye, he remembered the cup of pills the nurses brought to him in full Technicolor, and he remembered another pill. A vitamin? He did have a habit of not finishing his meals, and Joan hadn't liked that.

"Thank you." Adrian straightened the cuff of his sleeve and turned to Abigail. "You can get the atenolol for him."

Abigail nodded, moved her other foot to the carpet, and stood, taking the blood pressure cuff from her sister as she headed down the hall.

"Where's the Joker?" Jonathan wasn't sure why the question was so pressing, even as he asked it. He'd rather have his book back then the clown, and he couldn't imagine that the Joker would be sympathetic to his plight. Insofar as he had observed, the Joker had as much emotional understanding as a rock had knowledge of the process of photosynthesis. But he was the one that Jonathan was most familiar with, and unlike the twins, the Joker usually kept his hands to himself.

"Jackie's…out right now. He likes to wander." Someone ought to tell Anika that she'd be more reassuring if she lowered her voice. And took acting lessons. Jonathan considering telling her himself, but he didn't want to be the bearer of bad news. Not to the people who decided if he was living under their roof. "Hey, I'll go make you breakfast, all right?"

Jonathan thought about telling her that he wasn't hungry. He also thought about walking out the door and finding a home that wasn't populated by mad people, but at that moment, Adrian handed him _Ulysses,_ and Jonathan settled for ignoring the outside world.

* * *

AN: Anika's response to Jonathan's "Who are you people?" comes from a famous, depraved joke. A family goes into a talent agency and proceeds to show the talent agent their act, which is always completely depraved, involving violence, incest, and bodily fluids. When the agent asks what they call themselves, the punchline is "We're the aristocrats." The point of the joke isn't so much the punchline—which most people know from the start—but how terrible and over the top the story leading up to it is.

Lopril and atenolol are both blood pressure medications. Haldol is an antipsychotic, and Ativan is a sedative.


	3. Aftermath

AN: I'm sorry the chapters have been so slow. I'll try to have the next ones out more quickly, though I am working all day today and tomorrow, so there will be some delay.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

If she ever got her hands on that clown, Ruth Adams was going to wring his neck.

She should be afraid. Both for the safety of the city—the Joker was the most dangerous man Gotham had ever seen, and that was saying something—and for herself. The Joker was—had been—her patient, and whatever became of Arkham once the full details of the story leaked, Ruth knew she wouldn't walk away unscathed. Never mind that she couldn't have predicted the murder of the Joker's dog, or the fact that she'd never been taught Morse code. If they wanted a scapegoat, wanted to make it look like one bad apple instead of the whole orchard, there would be no better choice than the woman in charge of the Joker's care. It would be her fault for letting him go outside. Her fault for not paying close enough attention. And her mailbox with the pink slip inside, assuming they didn't just throw a box at her and tell her to clean out her desk.

And that was only Arkham Asylum. If the Joker decided that Ruth should also be a target for his rage or if he got bored and happened to look up her address—well, the police were still collecting the bits of Hadley's body scattered across the asylum's basement. All things considered, Ruth ought to be sobbing with fear and curled up under her desk by this point.

But she wasn't. She was furious and fatigued, and torn between tearing her hair out and breaking every object within arm's reach. Maybe she'd finally reached her snapping point. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, a way of redirecting to prevent a panic-induced heart attack. Whatever the reason, her blood was boiling and between that and the several dozen cups of coffee she'd thrown back since the police had arrived, Ruth couldn't even give herself the respite of sleep.

Beside her, Teresa's cell phone rang. She actually used ringing sounds for her phone as opposed to music or sound bites from movies. Usually, Ruth appreciated that; the only thing more annoying than having a phone call interrupt a conversation was having the ringtone stuck in her head for the rest of the day. Today, any minor annoyance was grounds for destruction of personal property, and it took everything Ruth had to keep from throwing the nurse's phone against a wall. She settled for putting her head down on the break room table and biting her lips to keep from shouting.

"That was Linda," Teresa announced to no one in particular.

It must have been a text message. Ruth was torn between sitting up and inquiring about her coworker's wellbeing, and slamming her head against the table until she knocked herself unconscious. At least then she could get some sleep, concussions aside.

"How is she?" Joan's voice.

Ruth fought the impulse to keep her head down until the caffeine was out of her system and she'd had a good twenty hours or so of sleep. Joan had not responded to Jonathan Crane's disappearance with anger and exasperation as Ruth had with the Joker's. Joan's response had been panic and worry, and Ruth would be ashamed to call herself a friend if she wasn't there to provide support. Even if that support consisted of nothing more than sitting there and trying not to fall asleep as Joan bit her nails.

Besides, Linda was a friend as well, and no matter how angry she was, Ruth hoped that being knocked out and bound by the Joker hadn't come with any lasting damage.

"Out of the hospital." If Teresa kept fidgeting with her phone that way, it was going to fall straight out of her hands and onto the floor. Oh well. As long as she wasn't drumming her fingers on the table or tapping her foot against the floor or anything else that would still be annoying once Ruth had turned her head, it wasn't worth dwelling on. "Apart from the bruise on her neck, she's fine. And as annoyed that they took her out in a wheelchair as she was when they made her get on the stretcher to leave. She's on her way home now."

_Lucky. _All right, so being assaulted by a serial killer and then interrogated by the police while inside an ambulance was far from lucky, but Ruth couldn't muster the effort to admonish herself for the thought. She wouldn't go so far as to say that she'd give her soul in exchange for some sleep away from the press outside and the police interviews, but she'd give it serious consideration. Certainly, being knocked out by a crazed man with a Chelsea grin didn't seem that bad of an exchange.

It had been before ten o'clock last night when Teresa came to Ruth's office with photographic evidence that the orderlies were abusing the Joker, and they'd rushed to the Joker's cell only to find that he was already missing. Ruth didn't know what she would have done had he still been there—she doubted that a lecture on how It Isn't Nice to Hurt People Even if They Started It and Killed Your Pet would have done the trick—only that, if they'd been earlier, three orderlies would still be alive. The security guard at the front gate and the officers outside the building wouldn't have been murdered. Strange wouldn't be hospitalized with a concussion and that last orderly wouldn't be having his jaw wired back together. If she'd bothered to _see _her patient after his dog had been killed instead of spending her time on incident reports and notes, then all of this could have been avoided. The _abuse _could have been avoided, if she'd ever taken the time to notice.

_Assuming the Joker wouldn't kill you and step over your corpse to get out._

Ruth shook her head. He could have done it—the ease with which he'd escaped demonstrated that all too well—and she wasn't deluded enough to believe that the Joker cared for her. But it didn't fit actions the night prior. He'd been after Hadley, and apart from that murder, the only people he'd actually killed were the men in the security room, and those positioned outside of Arkham when he'd returned. Both times, the people directly between him and what he wanted to accomplish. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe he was just too focused each time to be thorough on anyone else. Whatever the reason, if he'd wanted her dead last night it would have happened, whether she'd come to see him or not.

_And if he decides that he wants you dead now that he's out?_

She wasn't going to think about that. She wasn't going to think about what the Joker would do now that he was out any more than she was going to think about what he'd done before he'd escaped. Or the abuse that she'd missed, even when his arms were covered in wounds. There was a time and a place for that, and those wouldn't come until she'd had a night's worth of rest. Or several. Ruth focused her attention on Joan instead. "Are you all right, Joan?"

She didn't look all right. There were dark circles under her eyes, and considering how dark her skin was in ordinary circumstances, it almost looked as though she'd smeared mascara under her lower lids. Her hair, usually straightened and tamed with hair spray, was sticking every which way as if she'd barely had time to run a comb through it. She'd been woken up last night by a phone call informing her that the patient she worried most about had left the hospital with a madman in a trench coat, and it showed. Ruth could only imagine how her own face looked. "I'm fine."

"None of us are fine." It wasn't hyperbole. Somewhere around the time the Joker had torched a car outside the premises the locals had taken note, and now the press was swarming outside, barely kept in check by the GPD. They hadn't even released an official statement about the Joker's escape yet. When they did, it meant a mob of cameras and scathing editorials and inquiries, thanks to Teresa's photographs. Not that they didn't deserve inquiries. But after hours of interrogating despite her insistence that she had no idea where the Joker would go, and nothing in her notes that would help, Ruth didn't want to deal with more questions. She wanted to put her hands over her ears and keep them there until the rest of the world fucked off.

Joan sighed and crossed her arms. Then uncrossed them. Then gave up any pretense of professionalism and buried her head in her hands. "He could be _anywhere_, Ruth. Anywhere in Gotham, anywhere in the _state _by now. And he doesn't have his medications. He doesn't have any idea how to take care of himself."

For all her psychiatric training, Ruth had never felt more useless. She had questioned the court's decisions more than once in her life—in her line of work, nearly every interaction she had with the justice system left her scratching her head—but without a doubt, the worst decision they'd ever made was returning Jonathan Crane to Arkham Asylum. There was no question that the man needed psychiatric help, but he needed it in a different asylum. One that wasn't full of the people he'd worked with. And certainly not one where the closest thing he'd had to a friend here was assigned to his case. It was unfair to both of them, and this was the final twist of the knife. "He isn't alone," she offered.

Joan made a noise that wasn't quite a sob. "He's with the _Joker_, Ruth."

Point taken. "The Joker likes him."

Another choked sound.

"The Joker doesn't hurt people that he likes. He was around Gil—his dog every day for two months straight, and the only time he ever raised a hand toward her was when he was petting. Jonathan…amuses him. He's not going to try anything."

Joan raised her head. Her eyes were glistening but none of the tears had fallen. "And if Jonathan stops amusing him? What happens when the antipsychotics wear off and he completely loses it? Will the Joker find that entertaining, or is he just going to abandon him at the first panic attack?"

"He made a point of surrounding himself with the mentally ill. I doubt Jonathan will faze him." _But considering how the Joker treats his henchmen_…She needed to stop talking. Her reassurances were more likely to cause heart palpitations than they were to comfort.

"I don't want him around the Joker at _all_." Joan's face was ashen, her lips bitten to nearly the bleeding point. "No offense, Ruth."

"None taken." She wouldn't trust the Joker with one of her pet fish, let alone a human being.

_The fish._ Ruth hadn't been to her apartment since yesterday morning, before the chaos had begun. Meaning it had now been over a day before Carl and Sigmund had been fed. Wonderful. The police had sealed the building and the grounds, allowing no one out and only employees in until they'd conducted all the interviews and finished their sweep of the building. They'd stopped questioning Ruth around four in the morning. She'd tried sleeping on her office couch for an hour or so before giving up and making it down to the break room, where the coffee was on and the conversation was mercifully limited. She doubted the GPD would let her leave on account of a couple of fish. How would she even ask that? _Excuse me, Commissioner, I know that you're trying to deal with six murders and an escaped terrorist, but I need to take care of my pets._ Yeah. That would go over well.

Faking a sudden blood sugar crash or surge wouldn't work either. The infirmary kept glucose tablets and insulin on hand, and her medical records besides. Faking diabetes wouldn't win her any brownie points with the police or the asylum. She could always ram her head against something, but then she'd risk ending up like Dr. Quinzel. The intern had been lucky enough to be knocked out—presumably by the Joker in his escape—so that she missed the initial panic, but unfortunate enough not to end up concussed as a result. She'd had to endure police questioning with a splitting headache, and now she was spread out on the couch in the corner with an ice pack over her temple and her eyes tightly shut, as if to force out the pain.

That left calling the neighbors. _Absolutely not. _In her apartment complex, there was only one neighbor Ruth had ever felt comfortable leaving her key with, and if there was one person she didn't want to talk to right now, it was Elena Markova. On any other day she was just a retired, possibly senile woman who spent most of her time watching talk shows and chatting the ear off of anyone who'd engage her in conversation. Annoying, but tolerable. Today, the situation at Arkham had almost certainly been all over _Good Morning Gotham_, and she didn't want to hear a forty minute lecture on the dangers of working at the asylum and how she ought to consider another career or settling down and on and on and on before they got to the fish. Screw it. They would have to last until she was free to leave. Sigmund and Carl probably wouldn't hold a grudge.

"This is my fault."

Ruth snapped back to the situation at hand. Teresa. The nurse had let the phone fall out of her hands, but only to the seat of her chair. She made no move to retrieve it, wringing her hands in her lap and avoiding eye contact with either of her companions. "What?"

"It's my fault. I should have told someone—reported what they were doing to him." Teresa's eyes were glistening as well. Unlike the others, she couldn't keep them from spilling over. "I should have reported it as soon as it started. But I didn't."

"Teresa, you can't blame yourself for this." Joan got out of her own chair and put her hands on the nurse's shoulders. It didn't seem to do much in the way of comfort. "You had no way of knowing that the Joker would—"

"That's not the point!" Her voice broke on the last word. Ruth hoped it was fatigue and not an innate lack of empathy that made her more annoyed with Teresa's volume than compassionate toward her emotional state. "It doesn't matter what he did. I shouldn't have let it go on. _None _of the patients should go through that. And now people are dead and it's _my_ fault."

Ruth was inclined to pity her. Teresa had revealed the abuse last night, and the cover ups, how she'd been told by her own supervisor to avert her eyes and pretend she hadn't seen the bruises on her patient's bodies. The nurse was straight out of med school and working in the worst asylum in the state, and it was easy to see why she'd be easily influenced. But at the same time, the part of her that was furious with herself for ignoring the evidence and the part that had taken and meant every word of the Hippocratic Oath was disgusted. If she was so damn torn up about it, she should have _done _something, instead of sitting around feeling sorry for herself.

_No. _That wasn't fair. Correct, maybe, but not fair. Yes, the abuse absolutely should have been reported, but people made mistakes. Hell, she'd looked right at the Joker's scraped and bloodied arms and written it off as self-mutilation without a second thought. The Joker was gone now, and everyone here was miserable, and assigning blame wouldn't help the situation.

"You made a mistake."

Teresa sniffed and raised her head.

"We all do. You can't change it, only make sure it doesn't happen again. But what the Joker did—" Ruth faltered. She'd been about to say "was his choice," but she doubted Teresa would view a mental patient as responsible for his actions, no matter how manipulative and cunning he was. "That wasn't your fault. It wasn't the abuse that motivated him. It was the dog. And you're not responsible for that, all right? It isn't your fault that he killed those people. And if you keep beating yourself up over it, you'll be of no use to the people here who still need you. Understand?"

"But—"

Ruth gave her a look that clearly said any buts would not be tolerated.

Teresa sniffed again and nodded.

God, Ruth was going to _kill _the clown when she saw him again.

* * *

AN: Ruth's goldfish are named after Freud and Jung.


	4. Sleep Tight

AN: Every time I make a comment regarding my commitment to update more frequently, inevitably a delay will prevent itself. I'm beginning to think this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, so I should probably refrain from such remarks from here on out.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

There were two ways out of the Joker's employ: death or prison. And prison was only temporary.

The sheep in the clown's flock hadn't decreased when his exploits evolved from armed robberies to city-wide attacks. Rather, he'd had recruitment rates that would turn army recruiters pear-green with envy. Pear-green because, while it lacked the vibrant shade of an emerald or electric green—or the touch of blue in his personal favorite, sea green—it was the color that tinged people's faces when they were about to be sick from fear or jealousy or any number of emotions. The Joker was fairly sure it was pear-green, anyway. It wasn't as if he'd gone to Home Depot and collected color swatches to compare to his victims' faces.

The shrinks at Arkham—his teeth were grinding at the mere _thought _of Arkham—would probably have some boring theory on his henchmen, saying they'd joined up out of a desire for power, fear of being at the bottom of the pecking order, out of deep-seated anxieties from not being hugged enough as children, because they were following the leader, or an oral fixation or analingus or whatever Freudians called it. Which was all a pretentious, insurance-guzzling way of stating the blindingly obvious: before his temporary setback in the asylum, the Joker had Gotham City under his control and anyone with two brain cells to bounce off each other knew that it was better to stand behind the unstoppable force than it was to be trampled beneath it. That, and some part of them that society had beaten into submission envied what he had. The absolute freedom, power, and disregard for what anyone else wanted. Power had a greater rush and stronger pull than any drug could ever hope to boost.

This was aside from the psychos, of course. The Joker had no idea what made the likes of Thomas Schiff join up, unless it was the voices in his head. Or the messages the government slipped into Sudoku puzzles and papers that were knocked under the refrigerator.

Why they volunteered was irrelevant. Once the Joker got a new puppet, it was his forever or its strings would be snipped. He'd had men become terrified with what they were doing or what he was doing to those around him. He'd had men who tried to run, who actually expected to make it. As though they possessed anything close to subtlety. As though he couldn't see the betrayal burning in their faces. And as though he couldn't hunt them down and make an example of them.

And what an example he made. After the last runner, his henchclowns had been cleaning bits of bone of out the carpet for a week.

Those of them with a brain stem learned from the lesson. The Joker would like to consider their loyalty a result of undying devotion, but he was also a realist and assumed that "undying devotion" was actually more along the lines of "if I do what he wants I won't end up dead." Which was true. Most of the time. Whatever the reason, he had a gang that would lie in traffic for him if he so much as pointed at the road, but that was assuming that they hadn't defected when he'd taken a leave of absence.

If they had, they'd get to experience first-hand what their own kidneys tasted like.

Mind brewing with other such demonstrative and creative forms of discipline, the Joker arrived at his destination and began his way up the fire escape of the apartment complex.

* * *

The stores didn't sell white face paint in the early summer, as the Joker had been disappointed to discover.

Granted, the cheap stuff that materialized at every convenience store and shopping mall in October wasn't his first choice, but its absence still stung like battery acid in a paper cut. The Joker tended to go for the theatrical stuff. He wasn't concerned about clogging his pores or having a high quality product—he _liked _the way it rubbed off and around on his face, adding to the effect—but the professional paint lasted longer and melted on his face, not in his pocket. It was also easier to remove from the suit, which Abigail probably appreciated. He'd prefer the Halloween makeup to nothing, but most stores didn't sell Halloween memorabilia on the Fourth of July. A party supply or costume shop probably would have carried it but those were closed due to it being a national holiday, and also it being around four in the morning when he'd made a supply run.

The nearest twenty-four hour pharmacy had carried face powder, at least. The Joker had been hoping for some white as bleach, so-pale-you'll-glow-in-the-dark , gothic type of powder, but he'd had to make do with the lightest shade of the ordinary kind, officially the lowest he'd ever sunk. Still, it was impressively white, if not up to his usual standards. He considered giving the service number on the bottom of the compact a call and letting MAC know that he appreciated their willingness to serve near-albinos. But they'd probably be closed too.

He hadn't opened the face paint yet, or the black eyeshadow, harlot-y red lipstick, and vial of green food coloring he'd added to his shopping basket. It wasn't that he hadn't applied makeup and hair dye in the dark before, but he didn't like to use unfamiliar products without the aid of a mirror. There was a fine line between "disturbingly disarrayed" and "little girl in mommy's makeup," and while the Joker could deal with any laughter at his expense, he wasn't in the mood for it.

The Joker had, however, opened the package of bobby pins, and he sat down on the fire escape in front of David Ballard's door, twisting two of the pins with his newly-acquired pliers into the desired shape to pick the lock.

Ballard hadn't been one of the men to join the Joker's crusade out of insanity or some desire to slash people up that his other lines of work had frowned upon. He'd been one of the earlier employees, probably for the money, and when the Joker's love of chaos over cash had gone full swing he'd had the common sense to realize that leaving was not an option. Ballard had just enough brains to keep out off the Joker's way and off of his nerves, and the Joker couldn't think of any henches who'd held a grudge against the man. If anyone knew the rest of the clowns' locations—and which were still loyal—this would be a good place to start. Assuming, of course, that Ballard wasn't a turncoat himself. If he was, well, the Joker still had the buck knife and the Glock and everything else he'd accumulated.

And also assuming that he hadn't moved in the last three months. And if that was the case…well, the Joker still had the buck knife and the Glock and everything else he'd accumulated, and he could just picture all the creative ways those could be used to make a lasting, carpet-and-wallpaper-staining first impression.

He picked the lock easily enough and entered without worry of tripping a security system. All of Gotham's best and brightest—one watt—law enforcement officials were dealing with the situation at Arkham, and even if he did trigger something, it would be easy enough to collect his employee and leave in the time it took the police to arrive. Besides, people who ended up working for him either didn't have the money to spare on security systems or protected their homesteads with guns or baseball bats.

The floorboards creaked, but the Joker was similarly unconcerned about that. It took a sound of about forty decibels to keep someone from sleeping, but sixty decibels to rouse them from sleep. Given the darkened apartment, the inhabitants were either sleeping or absent, and unless he stood by the bed and jumped up and down, it was unlikely that the creaking was loud enough to rouse them. So even if Ballard had moved, the Joker could leave without disturbing the current owners—or at least not waking them. He couldn't deny that he'd be tempted to leave a welcome gift of some sort. _Pleasant dreams._

His eyes had adjusted to the lack of streetlights quickly, so there was no danger of crashing into anything. He found the bedroom easily—apartments in the Narrows didn't have much variety in architecture—and stood in the doorway, surveying. There was a gun on the nightstand and two figures in the bed. A girlfriend. The Joker couldn't say he approved. He'd tried to discourage romances in the work place. It had never been a problem _between_ his men, but the ones with the outside distractions—family, friends, empathy for their fellow man—just weren't as useful. And when something wasn't useful or amusing, it might as well be weighted down at the bottom of the river or used for dissections. Science was always entertaining.

The Joker considered waltzing on over in spite of his misgivings and introducing himself. That was sure to impress her. Knowing that her boyfriend was associated with someone in such a position of power could only increase her respect for him and strengthen their relationship. But not now. He didn't have his face on. It wouldn't have the same impact.

The Joker backed out of the room and made his way further down the hall to the bathroom.

He flipped on the light switch. If adequate lighting wasn't necessary to make sure the powder was actually adhering to his face, the Joker would have switched it right back off. He didn't escape from imprisonment in peeling white cement blocks and padded floors to stare at crumbling white plaster and a toilet that hadn't seen bowl cleaner since God was a small child. The Joker turned his attention to the mirror.

Hadley's blood was still on his face.

The Joker turned on the sink and shoved his hands under the water without bothering to remove his gloves, splashing that water onto his face. He hadn't minded the blood when it first splashed onto him, hot and dripping. It had been a reminder of the damage he'd caused and later, as it cooled, a reminder of the life he'd taken. But taking that life had failed to satiate his anger and now that it was dried, it was stiff, as if taunting him with the rage he couldn't cast aside. It was a reminder of how unfulfilling the murder had been more than it was a badge of pride, and seeing it reflected back at him was a slap in the face.

The water had dripped down his face and onto his collar, cold and unpleasant, but there wasn't blood in the reflection anymore and that was the only thing that mattered.

He didn't bother to dry his face before he attacked his skin with the powder puff. The liquid should help it to adhere better, and he hadn't thought to bring foundation. The girlfriend might have some, but sharing makeup before they were on a first name basis couldn't be good for any potential friendship. The powder went on, but it was slow-going and translucent no matter how much he brushed on, giving him the appearance of a deranged and scarred maiden aunt with too much talcum powder on hand. He should have seen if the pharmacy had actual paint.

The lipstick and eye shadow helped, though the eye shadow did have a bit of a sparkle to it that he could have done without. It wasn't that the Joker was opposed to glitter, but there was a time and a place to be fabulous and it wasn't when he was trying to remind his men why he was the ringleader of the circus. Ballard would be going on an errand run for better supplies when the Fourth was over, that was for sure.

His hands were coated with blood when he pulled the gloves off.

Well, coated was a strong word, but the Joker had always been one for hyperbole. He could still see his skin through the red, but there was an even layer of blood over every available surface, and the scabs over the cuts had reopened after all the finger motions involved in applying the paint. The Joker shoved a few fingers in his mouth to suck them clean and considered where to go from here.

_This could be trouble._

The thought came from a part of him that didn't think often, and kept to itself when he did. The little voice with its stupid suggestions that maybe he shouldn't participate in a high speed car chase, or that brushing his teeth would prevent decay. He'd all but torn out its vocal cords by this point in his life. The stress of the previous day must have brought it back. _Joy._

Worse than realizing that he had some sense of personal responsibility left was being forced to acknowledge that it had a point. He'd had his scraped-up hands inside of Hadley's body at certain points of the evening. Not all of the blood was his own. That realization got his hands out of his mouth quickly and almost brought Anika's cookies up with it. A pig like Hadley could be carrying anything from swine flu to ebola, and a warm, moist environment like the inside of a glove was the perfect breeding place for pathogens.

But his hands were only the tip of the iceberg. There had about two nights during his time in Arkham that his body hadn't been used as a punching bag, and the orderlies he'd killed to get to Hadley, along with the bastard himself, hadn't gone down without a fight. Some of his ribs were bruised. Others were almost certainly cracked. His skin was so bruised that he was more purple than white, and at least one tooth was chipped. The Joker could handle pain, but if one of those ribs snapped completely and pierced a lung, even he would be down for the count.

Maybe he should take a week or so to recuperate before he began making the skies rain with blood.

_No._

The Joker could, under the right circumstances, be a patient man. This was not one of these circumstances. This circumstance would only be solved by bloodletting and pain-inflicting and the sooner he started, the better. He settled for washing his hands with actual soap instead.

In the mirror, he watched Ballard's girlfriend walk into the room.

An average of sixty decibels to rouse someone from sleep. But a full bladder worked just as well.

Her eyes were swollen from sleep and still half-closed as she stumbled into the bathroom, but she wasn't bad-looking, tan and tall and blonde. If she was made up with brushed hair and high-end clothing instead of a T-shirt and panties, she might be able to pass for a model. A Romanian one, with an exotic name like Flavia or Iolanda. That was her name. Iolanda. There wasn't any particular reason for this decision, apart from the Joker liking the name Iolanda.

Iolanda's mind was apparently as clouded with sleep as her eyes, because she didn't question why the light in the bathroom was on or even notice the clown by the sink. She wandered right past him and around the privacy partition that contained the toilet. _So much for first impressions._

He should have introduced himself. It was only polite, but he doubted she'd appreciate making small talk on the toilet. Still, ignoring a coworker's partner must be a _faux pas_. The Joker had to make amends somehow. He backed out of the bathroom slowly, considering his options. He could just wait for her to come out, but if she was still as disoriented, it would be even ruder to wake her. Maybe he could cook breakfast, but he didn't know anyone's preferences.

The toilet flushed. Iolanda reappeared and moved toward the sink. Her eyes were open now. She was also fully alert, judging by the way those eyes went wide when she caught his reflection. And judging from the squeaking sounds coming from her throat, she wasn't impressed by his impromptu makeup work.

He smiled despite the rude way she was gaping. "Morning. Uh…do you like sunny side up or—"

That was as far as he got before she ran at a speed that Olympic sprinters would envy while still managing the lung capacity to shriek as she did it. The door slammed behind her hard enough to rattle in its frame.

Maybe she wasn't cut out for modeling, then. Any supermodel worth her salt wouldn't have made a dash without her shoes.

"The fuck?" Ballard's voice, from the bedroom. There were shuffling footprints from inside the room, but he didn't call out again. Must have regained the consciousness to realize that if someone was in the apartment, the last thing he needed to do was attract attention. The Joker waited patiently, though he couldn't keep from tapping his foot before Ballard emerged in the hallway, gun at the ready. Honestly. People were so violent over such little things.

"Get your hands where I can—" The words died in his throat as Iolanda's screams had at first, but unlike his girlfriend he didn't seem to have a full bladder, because judging by his expression, he would have emptied it over the floorboards if he had. "I—you—boss?"

He smiled again. It didn't seem to help. "Accept no substitutes."

"I—I thought you were—"

"There's a time and a place for that, and it's not when your honey's waking up the entire neigh_bor_hood." He crossed to Ballard. The man was apparently too overjoyed at his return to remember to lower the gun, so the Joker shoved his arms down for him. "We need to find a, uh, change of address before the cops show, and I need a gander at your ad_dress_ book."

Ballard, of course, was more than happy to oblige.

* * *

AN: Analingus is anal-oral sex. The Joker meant anal rentention.

The bit about decibels may or may not be true. I learned it in an extremely creepy (at least to me) Youtube video called _Sound Asleep_: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=480aVY9pSEU


	5. Back to Routine

AN: Wow, this chapter has been delayed. I'd like to say that I was out doing some sort of serious business or battling evil forces so or something that would make it sound like I haven't been slacking, but really, my disappearance is mostly due to lethargy, being out of town to visit relatives, and just feeling generally crappy (I'll spare you all the details but basically, it's suspected that I have endometriosis.) I was going to return to writing this weekend, but then my friend was all, "Let's go watch _Toy Story 3_" and I couldn't bring myself to pass up the Pixar. Add that to work and allergies, and it was delayed until today. All of this is my roundabout way of saying sorry for my absence, and that I'll try not to disappear again

I should mention that the Joker's timeline here isn't running at the same time as everyone else's, hence why it was still in the early morning in his last chapter when it was daytime for Jonathan's and Ruth's. It'll even out soon, but it's still off for his section of the chapter.

Thanks for the reviews, and I'm sorry I've been so delayed on the replies!

* * *

The Joker had never been a drug user, not really.

His abstinence wasn't based in any moral standard—if he was concerned with making his life fit within the bounds of a social contract, drug use would be the least of his issues—but rather, a personal and vehement disagreement with what recreational substances stood for. Drugs served as a filter between the mind and reality, as a shield against the absurdity of life. For Ordinary People who wanted to delude themselves into believing that they were worth something, that the earth itself would be changed by their actions, that they were more than just animals and they wouldn't tear each other limb from limb when the going got tough, it made sense. For the Joker, who stared into the abyss and reveled in the clarity that Everybody Else lacked, it was an affront to his person. A slap in the face. It was a willing delusion, and for all the things the Joker was, he wasn't insane.

That wasn't to say that he hadn't tried illicit substances, if only to experience what he would deny himself and know he wasn't missing anything. Contrary to what the PSAs preached, it w_as_ possible to take something once and not becoming a drooling, zombified addict as a result. Nonetheless, he'd approached it with hesitation which, for the Joker, was all but unheard of. Losing his life to the Bat was one thing. One _glorious_ thing. Wasting away and preferring an imagined world to reality was another entirely, and it was beneath him.

In the end, it hadn't proved to be a temptation. The Joker hated the way it dulled his senses, the way the hallucinations of the harder drugs interfered with his perception of reality. He'd never felt the urge to repeat those experiences, so he had no qualms with his men carrying and using such substances as long as it didn't interfere with their ability to do as they were told. If his henchclowns wanted to run around with tissue up their nose to stop the bleeding after a cocaine binge, more power to them.

The one exception to that rule was marijuana, and it was only an exception when it was used in the Joker's presence.

He wrinkled his nose and tried to pretend that he didn't have the urge to take Ballard's joint and extinguish it in the man's eye. It might abate some of the clown's rage, but it would mean removing his chauffeur's depth perception and crippling the man who had all the information he needed regarding the whereabouts of his gang. The Joker supposed he could track them down on his own should he have no other options, but it would be so _tedious_. He settled for rolling down the window.

It wasn't the drug that offended him; it was the smell.

Generally, Ballard had the sense not to smoke around him. Generally, he was quiet and unassuming, doing as he was told without question and taking steps to ensure that he didn't piss the clown off. It was a different quiet now, a hostile quiet, and it was the first time Ballard had done something as suicidal as smoke around the Joker with the windows up. If he had to guess, the Joker would say it the man was being passive-aggressive as punishment for scaring Iolanda off. That had been over half an hour ago. He needed to stop dwelling on the past.

"As I was say_ing_," the Joker continued, pretending that Ballard wasn't asking for a knife to the pancreas, "there were two florist shops open after midnight. _Two. _In the Narrows. On the Fourth of July. But not one party supply store which would, uh, actually have _spark_lers and bottle rockets and face paint and all that jazz."

"Why did you need flowers?"

Those were the first words Ballard had spoken since he'd started the ignition. The Joker had no intention of answering, partly as a punishment for the man's poor etiquette but mostly because no one was privy to his personal life, especially not his employees. Ballard wasn't important, wasn't special, wasn't any different than any other street thug: unprivileged and over-muscled, and taking up the one line of work open to man—and more than a few women—living in the Narrows. But the question was enough to make the Joker reflect on the roses, on how he'd had to lay the flowers over the lawn instead of a grave because Gilda's body was gone and he'd never get to pay his respects properly, on how his hands were bleeding inside the gloves again from the way he was clenching his fists, and then Ballard was exhaling smoke and the scent of marijuana seemed suffocating and without even thinking about it, the Joker grabbed the joint from the man's hand and threw it out the passenger window.

"The smoke made my eyes sting," he offered in explanation. It didn't stop Ballard from staring at him as though he'd just drop-kicked the Easter Bunny. People got pissy over the stupidest things. "You know, it's not _my_ fault your girl made like the Road Runner."

Ballard drove on in silence. He probably didn't even know who the Road Runner was. Society was so culturally deprived these days.

The Joker cracked his knuckles, reclining in his seat. For a moment they drove on without speaking, Ballard pretending that he wasn't seething and the Joker watching the interior of the car, the way it seemed to change color with every neon sign they passed. Blue, red, red, green, blue, like a Christmas tree. But it also illuminated the ash on the dashboard, the smudged windshield, the deteriorating roof, and the Joker quickly tired of it and cleared his throat. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?" Terse, but he'd had the sense to answer. He wasn't angry to the point of being suicidal, not yet.

"Say I'd decided to silence your lady friend with, uh, a bul_let_ to the brain—" Ballard's teeth clenched and he smirked. "Ah ah, lemme go on—say I'd done that, but it hadn't killed her, all right? Just left her kinda vegetative. Would you have visited her in the ho_spit_al every single day until she atrophied to nothing? Held her hand, brought her flowers, devoted your life to taking care of her? Is that how much commit_ment_ you had to her?"

A pause. They were headed further into the Narrows, where many of the streetlights were either burnt out or broken, and the Joker couldn't make out Ballard's expression. He could, however, discern the eventual shake of the head.

"So what's the use in being upset?" The Joker leaned back again, lacing his hands behind his head. "Now, tell me what I missed during my, uh, leave of absence."

* * *

Ruth barely had to step into her apartment to realize she'd been wrong.

The fish did hold a grudge.

Sigmund and Carl were always waiting when she came home, ridiculous as it sounded. They were stuck in a tank after all, so it wasn't as if they had anywhere else to go. They were fish. They probably didn't have any perception of her apart from "that big creature that occasionally brings food and blocks our view of the living room," let alone affection. But she was sure that on some level they did care, improbable as it was. They were never gliding through the plants or examining the rocks at the bottom of their aquarium when she came home. They were in the open water, facing her, watching. Maybe it was a Pavlovian response to the opening door, a knowledge that they would be fed. Or maybe it was it was genuine attachment.

Whatever it was, they weren't doing it today.

There was no sign of Carl's silvery scales, or even a hint of Sigmund's red tail. They were hiding in the plants, and they made no move to come out when she walked into the apartment, assuming they could feel the vibrations of her footsteps through the floor. Their anger must be stronger than their hunger. Well, this day couldn't get any better.

"I was dealing the homicide squad all day." Ruth uncapped the jar of fish food, resisting the urge to throw it against the wall and scream herself hoarse. She kept her composure, though just barely. "It's a miracle I'm even here now."

The fish gave no response.

"Thanks, guys. I'm glad to know I have your sympathies." She tilted the jar over the water and watched the flakes spill out. The smell turned her empty stomach, but the brightly colored bits falling into the water were a welcome change of aesthetics from the faded, peeling walls she'd been stuck in all day.

It was only as Carl and Sigmund finally emerged that Ruth realized she'd also neglected to water the spider plant on her desk today. Oh well. At least it couldn't resent her for that. Probably.

She didn't try to offer an explanation to the fish. It would only lead to a rant on today and the night before and every day since the Joker had been assigned to her, and while it might provide catharsis, it was also sure to provoke a shouting fit. If there was one thing she couldn't deal with, it was concerned neighbors. Especially after the news broadcasts. The Joker's escape was official now. It was only a matter of time until the calls started.

_Looks like they already have. _In the kitchen, the light on the answering machine was flashing. Ruth pulled a cigarette from her pocket and made it as far as the doorway before the numbers became clear. Ten new messages.

She leaned back against the doorframe and flicked on her lighter. It was less than she'd expected, but more than she had the stamina to deal with. She doubted she'd have been able to deal with one. Ruth had spent two straight days dealing with the suffering of everyone else around her without the chance to devote a minute to her own emotions—which, at this point, were about as stable as a type four hurricane—and she couldn't sit through another conversation about the Joker.

At this point, she doubted she'd be able to even look at the bastard again without tearing his throat out.

Ruth flicked the ash from her cigarette. There was an ash tray on the counter about three feet away, but she couldn't be bothered to walk to it. So there would be ash on the linoleum. So what? In the grand scheme of things, it didn't even register as a mild annoyance. Not at this point.

The phone rang, piercing the first moment of calm she'd had all day. It might be someone she actually cared to speak to. Joan, maybe, though Joan would probably call the cell phone. Ruth had thought of inviting Joan to have dinner, if only so her coworker wouldn't sit at home sobbing, but she hadn't been in the mood to cook and she couldn't stomach the thought of listening to some perky waitress reciting the daily specials after all they'd gone through. Besides, selfish as it was, Ruth wanted to put the day behind her and spending time with another Arkham doctor would make that impossible.

She crossed the kitchen and lifted the phone off its receiver. She switched it on, then off, then back on, and left it lying on the counter as she made her way to the living room couch, ignoring her rumbling stomach and reveling in the silence. Her cell phone was still on, but Ruth couldn't be bothered to deal with that unless it actually went off. She kicked off her shoes and sank back into the cushions, closing her eyes and trying to pretend she'd never heard of Arkham Asylum, let alone the Joker. She wasn't successful.

"What do I do now?"

The fish didn't offer any answers.

* * *

"What kind of books do you like?"

The Scarecrow must have heard Anika's question—Abigail could hear it clearly from the kitchen, even over the sizzling skillet—but if he had heard it, he'd either ignored it or given an inaudible reply. If Abigail had learned one thing about the man over the course of the day, apart from the medications he ought to be on and the fact that he made Jackie look sane in comparison, it was that the Scarecrow didn't like to talk.

Or maybe he just didn't like talking to them. Abgail couldn't say she blamed him. He had been brought here with no warning on their part—and, knowing Jackie, no foreknowledge on the doctor's side either—the one person of the group he was familiar with had up and left without so much as a goodbye, and now he was surrounded by strangers and without his medications. Medications which, judging by his behavior while they were still in his system, he desperately needed. Abigail doubted she would be in a talkative mood under such circumstances.

Still, it made designing his outfit all the more difficult. He wouldn't even say if he preferred brown or black, let alone allow her to take measurements.

She leaned over the half-wall that separated the kitchen from the living room and observed the scene before her. The Scarecrow hadn't moved from the pullout couch all day, apart from the times when she'd led him down the hall to the bathroom. Adrian's clothes were wrinkled around his thin frame and his thick, dark hair was still tousled despite the brush she'd run through it while he was too absorbed in _Ulysses _to protest. He'd finished the book now, and Anika had been attempting to entertain him since, but it was anyone's guess as to whether he found it comforting or annoying. Anika sat beside him now, hunched over to type on the laptop between them. "What are you doing, Ani?"

"Looking for books. Since he doesn't seem to like much else."

Abigail thought of the money Jackie had left before he took off, and how inadequate it was for boarding the Scarecrow before she took into account items of entertainment. "How are you paying for it?"

"Jackie'll be back."

She wished she could have her twin's optimism. Abigail glanced at the stovetop, and the butter skittering across the skillet. "Hey, I think it's hot enough."

Anika stood, nudging the laptop in the Scarecrow's direction. After he failed to even glance at it, she pushed the screen down and straightened her skirt. It was only after she'd disappeared into the kitchen that the Scarecrow looked up, as though he'd only realized Anika had been sitting him once she'd gone.

"She's making dinner," Abigail explained. "It's chicken-fried rice. You're not allergic, are you?"

"I can't eat strawberries."

"There aren't any strawberries in that."

The Scarecrow shrugged and became fixated on the laptop sitting beside him. Abigail wasn't sure if she should pity the man—he was clearly a few needles short of a sewing kit—or giggle. People completely out of touch with reality and suffering from high blood pressure and the start of medication withdrawal shouldn't be this cute.

She grabbed the sketches she'd made so far for a Scarecrow costume, ignoring the voice in the back of her head that thought he'd be too out of it to ever properly utilize the outfit, and sat down beside him. The Scarecrow poked the laptop lightly, and then abandoned all interest once it became clear that the machine wasn't going to respond.

"Did you line your mask with anything?"

The Scarecrow tilted his head.

"The mask that you wore. The burlap one. Was it lined?"

"It had an air filter." He repeated the words under his breath. He'd done that on and off throughout the day as he'd spoken. Adrian had theorized that he couldn't tell if he'd actually spoken, though whether that was a result of his insanity or brain damage from the toxin was anyone's guess.

"Yes, but did it have any other fabric on the inside? To make it more comfortable?" The appeal of burlap was how well it breathed, and Abigail supposed that lining it would make it much hotter much faster, but still. She imagined how burlap would feel against bare skin, even with fabric softener, and twitched.

He gave the question far more thought that it necessitated and finally shook his head.

"Okay." Abigail jotted that down. He _could _go without a lining, but if she found any light, breathable fabric, he wouldn't. He had enough to worry about on the streets without adding itchiness to the mix. "How do you feel about hats?"

The Scarecrow tilted his head again, and the way his hair was standing up combined with his wide blue eyes reminded Abigail so strongly of a bewildered cat that she couldn't help but giggle. The Scarecrow didn't seem to like that, and of course that only made her laugh harder.

* * *

AN: Carl is an angelfish and Sigmund is a red-tailed shark.


	6. Times Have Changed

AN: Again, sorry for the disappearance. In between working several ten hour shifts and preparing the house for a Fourth of July party, my writing time was pretty much gone and my writing energy completely sapped. I'll try not to disappear for a long stretch again, though I will be gone for a few days later in the month for a family reunion.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

Something was wrong with the Joker.

Anyone with eyes could see that. Normal people didn't paint themselves up like clowns. Normal people made it a point to bathe at least every few days. Normal people didn't wear the same suit day after day, and they didn't wear bright purple, though Ballard would admit that normal pimps might. And even in his line of work, normal people didn't go to the extremes that the Joker did. Before he'd met the clown, Ballard's skills had been utilized in armed robberies and drug shipments. Seemingly overnight, he was now involved in planting explosives and delivering video threats to local news stations. Anyone with a functioning brain stem could see that the clown was fucked up.

But tonight it went beyond that. There was something wrong with the Joker, something wrong even for the clown. It wasn't something that the average Gothamite would have perceived, even if they were seated as close to the Joker as Ballard was now. It took an understanding—Ballard wasn't suicidal enough to think that he truly _understood_ the Joker, but living and working with the clown had given him a better insight than most—that anyone outside of the Joker's employee circle would lack, and wouldn't want to get close enough to gain in the first place. To them, the Joker was a homicidal lunatic, a real life boogeyman. And he was. But there was more to it than that, especially tonight.

The clown had been different the night they first met.

It was over a year ago now. Ballard couldn't remember the exact date anymore. If he'd known then what an impact this punk kid would have on his life, how much would have changed in a little over twelve months, he'd have made it a point to mark the day and time. Or to get the hell out of Gotham and never look back. Whenever it had been, it had been about a week or two before the water main in the Narrows had gone toxic and changed the place from merely a hellhole into straight-out hell.

He'd been alone that night, on his way to meet friends. People who lived in the few nice areas of Gotham would call walking alone in the Narrows suicide, particularly when the sun was down. And for them, it would be. For a lifelong resident of the slums, especially those who had chosen to make a living off their muscle, things were different. Ballard's mother worked in Animal Control—there was never of a shortage of abandoned or abused pets in this part of the city—and he'd always equated navigating the Narrows to her line of work. Most people didn't know how to handle a rabid dog; they'd have their throats torn out in a second if they tried to approach it. But someone who had spent time around rabid dogs and learned to watch for the signs of an impending attack could restrain one and walk away unscathed. Ballard knew the Narrows. He knew the most dangerous areas and the hotspots for gang warfare, and he kept to the places where he knew he could defend himself.

Still, even the most experienced dog handler could slip up and lose a few fingers. Where Animal Control had bites, the Narrows had bullets, so wherever Ballard travelled he carried a firearm of his own.

No one had tried to engage him that night. It was rare that someone did, and rarer still that the one out to start something wasn't drunk or wasted. Residents of the Narrows could tell by looking if someone was prepared for a fight and someone presenting himself competently, as Ballard did, was someone best left alone. No one had interacted with him in any way until the Joker had stepped out an alleyway, wiping the blood from his face.

He hadn't been the Joker then. It might have been what he went by—he didn't give Ballard his name, if it could be called that, until their second meeting—but he either hadn't adopted his style yet or he'd chosen to go without it for a night. He had been blond then, a dirty, curly blond so greasy that his hair probably would have stood on end if he ran a hand through it. He'd been pale from a lack of sunlight as opposed to face paint, with circles around his eyes from fatigue, not makeup. Even the purple trench coat was gone, swapped for a black leather duster a size or two overlarge. His nose was bleeding and he wiped at it with bruised knuckles, sniffing between pants.

Ballard's first thought had been _addict. _Just what the kid was addicted to, he had no idea—there were no shortage of drugs that could be snorted, especially not in the Narrows—but anyone staggering around like that had clearly taken a heavy hit, and anyone bleeding that profusely afterwards must have done a lot over a long time. Besides, drug _deals _were done in alleyways, away from the eyes of the infrequent cops. Drug _use _was done in bathrooms or houses. Indoors at the least. Only the homeless would risk being strung out on the streets, open to robbery or murder or everything else. For someone to snort in an alley, that person would either have to be desperate or just too stupid to live. This one appeared to be in his mid-twenties, so if he'd survived that long he was either he was confident—or cocky—enough in his ability to defend himself that he didn't fear leaving himself open, or he'd only recently started using.

The kid had caught him staring and broke into a wide, almost sheepish smile. There was blood over his stained teeth and the combination of colors made Ballard think of strawberry syrup over toffee ice cream. It had been one of his favorite desserts in his youth. He doubted he'd be able to make it through a bowl without turning his stomach now that he had this as a visual. "_Hellooooooo._"

He'd drawn the word out from two syllables to five. His voice was nasal and gruffer than Ballard would have expected from his youthful appearance. At the time, Ballard had chalked it up to congestion from drug use. He hadn't answered, waiting for the kid to giggle or become entranced by the streetlights or wander off like a typical addict. He hadn't, just grinned.

"Don't suppose you've got a handkerchief on your person?"

Street kids didn't talk that way. Hell, most street kids probably didn't know what a handkerchief was. That should have made him wary, in retrospect. In actuality, he was barely paying attention to the kid's words at that point because he'd become too distracted by the scars. Ballard had written them off as blood smears at first, or meth sores. Now that they were directly facing each other, they were obvious scars, massive, disfiguring ones. There were two slashed through his cheeks, one a smooth curve and the other jagged, and a smaller one through his lip that Ballard only noticed once the kid's tongue emerged between stained teeth and licked at it. The blood seemed to accentuate the scars instead of covering them up, filling in each crevice of the scar tissue and making them that much more vibrant. Ballard couldn't tear his eyes away from them despite the knowledge that engaging a bloodied, high street youth was asking for trouble. Scars that thick had to carry through to the other side. He'd known people who'd gone through massive injuries without succumbing to shock—Ballard had his fair share of wounds and then some—but he'd seen scarred torsos and extremities. Never that sort of damage to the face.

"_Helloooooooooo_?" The kid made it seven syllables this time. "The, uh, line I dialed not in service or something? Do you have a Kleenex, at least?"

He sounded alert, if he was trashed. Of course, a heavy drug user could take large hits without much outward reaction, but this kid didn't act as though he was under the influence of drugs. He was under the influence of _something_, Ballard was sure, but he was starting to doubt that something was a chemical substance. Ballard shook his head, finally looking away. The street was empty. He should cross it now. The stranger was shorter than him and much smaller, but a fight consisted of more than size. And if the kid was wasted, chances were he wouldn't feel any hits.

"More's the pity," the kid muttered, wiping at his nose again. His eyebrows slanted down and he grabbed the front of his shirt, dragging it out from under the duster to examine the blood splatter over the striped fabric. "I'd be hoping too much for a bleach pen, wouldn't I?"

Ballard nodded.

"What a waste of an evening." He released the shirt and straightened, sniffing again. He half-turned, staring at the street before him as though this was the first time he'd laid eyes on it, and took a step away before he paused, then moved to face Ballard. "You wouldn't be in need of, uh, employ by any chance, would ya?"

Ballard didn't respond.

"See, I'm looking for men of, um, _ill_ repute and no offense, but you look like you'd fi_t _the bill." The hand that wasn't pressed to his face was gesticulating wildly. "And I just had a couple of guys _really _disappoint me, so there's an opening. Limited time offer." He trailed off, hand disappearing into his duster and reemerging with a wallet on a chain. The kid flipped it open and pulled out a number of bills. "It pays well, if you're _wor_ried."

He was trashed. He had to be. No one would be stupid enough to wave money around like that unless they were either high or suicidal. Or crazy. The third option seemed more and more likely with every word out of the kid's mouth.

"No." Ballard nearly added "thank you" to avoid angering his bizarre new acquaintance but decided against it. He didn't need to prolong conversation with someone who was either dangerous or asking to die. You got away from mad dogs or you put them down. You didn't buy them a steak and scratch behind their ears while they ate it.

"Well, to each their own." The kid inexplicably giggled. Not laughed, not chuckled, giggled. Like a school girl. Only it was raspy while high-pitched, like nails clinking and scratching inside a rusted can, and something about it sent chills down Ballard's spine. "If you change your mind, come and find me." He started across the street—there was a definite and seemingly unintentional stagger to his walk—and halted in his tracks, turning again before Ballard could walk off. "You'll know me when you see me, trust me."

And then he was gone. Ballard had taken off, but not without a glance into the alleyway. Dark and empty save for a dumpster, assorted litter, and two dark shapes he'd taken for garbage bags. Then a car had passed, headlights briefly illuminating the space, and he saw the shapes for what they really were: bodies. Presumably the "couple of guys" that had so disappointed the street youth. His blood had run cold again.

Ballard had learned to trust his instincts long ago, and his instincts had told him to run. The kid had faded from his mind over the course of the evening and was little more than a passing wonder the next morning. Ballard had all but forgotten him until after the Narrows were poisoned, in the time before police efforts and vaccinations had rendered the place hospitable again. For well over a month everyone who had escaped the toxin had fled for their lives, stuck in overcrowded hotels and makeshift shelters, waiting for news as to whether or not their friends and family had survived. Even the gang warfare had gone on hold, making work scarce and money scarcer.

The Joker had found him in a bar. Ballard was there not to drink, but to watch. See if there was anyone who looked like they were shopping for his type of business. There had been a hand on his shoulder one morning, a hand in a purple glove. By that point, Ballard had heard of the clown. There were looters in the Narrows, risking their lives for whatever they could grab, and when they returned they told stories of a man in face paint who fought off the "toxin-zombies" without effort, who took down anybody who stood between him and his goals without breaking a sweat, and who was amassing his own small army for purposes unknown. Most had written it off as a fantasy inspired by the remnants of the toxin. Ballard himself had believed that there was some idiot running around in makeup who hadn't actually done the deeds they attributed to him. Some punk dressing up like a _Rocky Horror _reject didn't make a good story if he didn't accomplish anything.

Then he met the Joker, and that had changed.

"We meet again." The clown had grinned and taken the seat opposite him. How he'd made it through the bar unnoticed, Ballard had no idea in hell, but he hadn't focused on it at the time either. He'd recognized the kid's voice, not his face, and the realization that the man staring at him through the paint was the same one he'd seen in the alley weeks ago froze him in his place, able only to stare. The paint had made the angles of his face harsher, and it bled into the lines of his face, making him appear far older. Ballard wouldn't have believed it was the same person if not for the scars.

"Sorry, where are my manners?" the kid was muttering, flipping the chair around so that he could rest his arms on the back. "I'll buy you a drink. Or two, if you want. Hope I didn't disturb you last we met, you'll have to make _allow_ances, I was a bit, uh, concussed, but I've healed completely, if you were worried, anyway you can order anything you want, don't worry about the cost, I just showed a very nice man with an armored car a, uh, few of my knives and he was per_fect_ly willing to let me climb over his corpse to get his keys, so it's all good and just so you know, that limited time offer isn't a limited as I thought, so if you're in need of _cash_, I offer pretty _flexible _hours…"

He should have trusted his gut the second time around. But it was work or become destitute, and the clown was an up and coming force in the criminal politics of the Narrows. _So he wears face paint_, Ballard had tried to reassure himself. It was just a quirk. Big deal. He'd had inklings of just how damaged his employer was, inklings that he'd forced himself to subdue, but he hadn't realized how twisted the Joker was beneath the exterior until it was too late, and once Ballard was in, there was no getting out. Hence why he was here now, driving a madman in makeup across the city at ungodly hours of the morning.

"Who's left?" the Joker muttered. He didn't bother to look up as he sorted through the glove compartment, throwing everything that didn't interest him into the backseat.

Ballard made a mental checklist of the Joker's remaining thugs. The numbers were less than impressive. "Everyone you took to the Prewitt Building was either arrested or shot."

He expected the Joker to respond. Instead, the clown pulled a napkin from the glove compartment, and pulled the cap off of what Ballard took to be a pen before the Joker started scribbling, forming pale pink letters on the napkin. Lip-liner. It had been Amber's. Amber, who he'd never see again and who he'd be lucky if he even spoke to over the phone. He gritted his teeth, fighting an external display of anger. The Joker had demonstrated exactly what he thought of such displays when he'd tossed the joint out the window, and the Joker wasn't one for repeat warnings.

"And?"

"And—and a few of them went to the mob."

The Joker stopped writing.

"Kent, Tyson, Marshall, Darius, and Roberts," Ballard rattled off, fingers clenching around the steering wheel as his foot pushed down on the accelerator. His entire body tensed in reflex, unable to keep his eyes on the road for fear that the Joker would pull out a gun and put a few rounds in his head. "Everyone else is still with you. They—they didn't have any income while you were gone, and they were afraid—"

"Which. Mob." It was a demand, not a question.

He tried to swallow and ended up choking. "Maroni's."

The Joker kept the lip liner poised above the napkin. Ballard supposed he should be relieved that the clown hadn't gone trigger happy yet, but the fear of having a makeup pencil jammed into his throat or through his eye made it impossible for his heart rate to slow. His hands were sweating so badly he could barely grasp the steering wheel.

"Maroni's dead."

"His brother isn't."

The Joker mulled that over, chewing at his scars from the inside. He went back to writing, foot jiggling up and down as he did. Ballard glanced over at the dashboard once they reached a stop sign, the streetlight illuminating the Joker's text.

"S**hit** LiSt (shiT mean_s _**kill**)"

Below that was a list of names. Only first or last names, from Ballard's glimpse, and none of them thugs or Mafiosos that he knew of.

Something was definitely wrong with the clown.

Over time, Ballard had managed to translate the clown's moods. Jittery behavior and odd facial expressions had started to mean more than "crazy, or possibly stoned." The Joker's words sped up when he was excited. His smaller, twitchier smiles seemed to indicate genuine happiness. Too wide of a grin meant that he was either pissed or ecstatic—which were equally dangerous—and when his voice dropped to a lower register, it meant he was irretrievably, homicidally furious. Even his laughter had tones to indicate emotions. Like a babysitter walking on eggshells to avoid a tantrum from a toddler, Ballard had learned to interpret the signs and stay away from the clown when he was in a dangerous mood. It was how he'd lived this long.

But this...Ballard had never seen this before. The Joker was obviously angry, but it wasn't like anger at a henchman for fouling something up. It wasn't anger like a plan going wrong. The closest Ballard had to equate it to was the way the Joker reacted when someone threw out the dreaded "f" word—freak—or worse, "crazy." But even that wasn't accurate. There was moroseness to it as well. Ballard would call it sorrow if he thought the clown capable of such a thing. And to think Ballard had been naïve to hope that Arkham Asylum might make a difference.

He'd never really expected it to. There were some diseases that could be fixed and some that were terminal, and whatever madness contained within the clown showed no signs of ever letting go. Ballard doubted a _good _hospital would make a difference, let alone Arkham. If anyone was cured in Arkham, Ballard had never heard of it. That place didn't have release rates so much as it had a revolving door. Still, he'd prayed that there would be _some _difference. At the very least, he hoped it would contain the clown and give Ballard back a normal life.

But clearly, the hospital hadn't made him better.

"Take a right," the Joker said without looking up.

He cleared his throat, knowing it was suicide to ask but unable to stop himself. "Boss…are you okay?"

The Joker had the coat pulled back in a matter of seconds, his hand on one of the guns he must have collected in his escape. It was in a hostler at his hip and his hand rested on top of it, but he didn't draw it. Not yet. "Take a _right._"

Ballard did, and a left at the light after that. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, tongue bitten nearly to bleeding, but he didn't let a sound escape though he was almost sick with fear, even after he realized that the Joker was directing them into Maroni's district.

* * *

AN: I tend to associate characters' ages with the age of their actors. Heath Ledger was twenty-eight in TDK, and I imagine TDK takes place about a year after _Batman Begins_, so the Joker would be about twenty-seven in the flashback. For today's useless fact, the makeup so altered Heath Ledger's appearance that my mom estimated the Joker to be forty.


	7. Cat

AN: How to know you've been at work for way too long: In a desperate attempt to alleviate your boredom, you start mentally assessing what color power ring each of your coworkers would be best suited to, because you've already assigned them all Batman characters. Then, once everyone has been given a color, you start wondering which of the Lantern Corps you would be best suited for, deciding on either red or yellow. Then, once you've decided it should be yellow if only because the powers associated with the red ring would endanger all your coworkers and customers, you start to wonder if your concern for their safety means you should have the indigo ring instead.

Bottom line being, I work too much. And I've also probably completely bewildered anyone who isn't a Green Lantern fan. For the latter, here you go: en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Power_ring_(DC_Comics)

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"He isn't eating."

Anika had always excelled in stating the obvious.

She had also chosen an extraordinarily uncomfortable spot to spy from. The Scarecrow was still seated on the pull-out couch, staring at and occasionally poking the food on his plate with a fork as though he absorbed nutrients via osmosis, so Anika had chosen to watch him from behind the half-wall separating the rooms. Abigail still wasn't sure why they'd felt the need to hide behind something in the first place, only that it had seemed absolutely imperative at the time. Now, several minutes later, there was no progress in consumption on the Scarecrow's part and Abigail was beginning to lose sensation in her arms from putting her bodyweight on the countertop as she leaned forward. She was also developing a stiff neck from the awkward angle she had to tilt her head at in order to just barely glance over the wall.

Anika, being exactly the same height and weight as her twin, had to be suffering as well, but she didn't show it. The only suffering apparent in her features was heartbreak over the fact that the Scarecrow wasn't enjoying her rice. It wasn't that Abigail couldn't sympathize—cooking was Anika's passion as much as sewing was her own—but her sister was missing the rather important detail that the Scarecrow was clearly already out to lunch and probably wasn't even aware that there was a plate in front of him, let alone that he was meant to be eating from it.

"He's sick, Ani. He probably doesn't have any appetite." The Scarecrow's blood pressure should be lowered by now, but there was still the issue of the antipsychotics. He shouldn't be going into withdrawal yet; unless Jackie had broken out a few days ago and only brought his friend here this morning—unlikely, as that sort of thing ought to be headline news—the drugs should still be in the Scarecrow's system. Should. Given how disoriented their new friend was acting, Abigail was beginning to question that. Maybe his body burned through the drugs faster than expected. He was certainly skinny enough. Maybe being moved to a new place and surrounded by strangers had exacerbated his condition. Or maybe he was just this out of it all the time, drugs or not.

"He doesn't like my cooking," Anika all but wailed, as the Scarecrow regarded the plate briefly before turning his gaze to the bedspread, staring at the sheets as though he was trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone.

"Don't be ridiculous."

Adrian was on the phone with his suppliers now, attempting to hunt down an antipsychotic either identical or very similar to the Scarecrow's as soon as possible. It would have been one thing if Jackie had brought a friend with an infected wound. They had penicillin and drainage tubes and all the other necessities for that. But back alley doctors weren't known for psychiatric work, and they had nothing of that sort on hand apart from sedatives. And while there was a demand for psychiatric drugs on the market, it was for recreational use. Abigail could only hope he would find something before the Scarecrow entered withdrawal.

She also hoped that Jackie would return bearing cash before Adrian could get sick of the hassle involved with caring for the clown's friend and send the Scarecrow packing. He wouldn't throw the poor guy out on the street—Adrian may act apathetic, but he wasn't _that _heartless—but it wouldn't be out of character for her brother to leave their houseguest on a street corner and then call Arkham Asylum as soon as he was out of earshot. It was good business sense, but Abigail didn't _want _the Scarecrow to leave. Sure, he was antisocial, near-mute, and had made no efforts thus far to connect with any of them, but he was _fun_, like an adorable stray kitten rescued from a storm drain. She wanted to give him a costume and a hug and several dozen cookies. Yes, he was a dangerous criminal. Yes, his toxin had nearly gotten them killed. But it was hard to care about any of that when he acted so cutely out of touch with the world.

Besides, while she didn't know the extent of the Scarecrow's condition or what strides, if any, he made during his incarceration, Arkham didn't appear to have done him any favors.

"'_Gail_." Anika's voice penetrated through her thoughts, at a whining pitch not unlike a mosquito's buzz. "What if he's anorexic?"

How quick she was to forget her glee over the Scarecrow's appreciation for the cookie last night. "He's not anorexic." He was thin, too thin from what she'd seen when he changed into Adrian's clothes last night, but his body still retained somewhat healthy proportions, and he hadn't objected to her presence when his skin was exposed. Presuming he was aware that she'd been in the room at all. The Scarecrow was a lot of things, but Abigail doubted anorexic was one of them.

"You can't know that for sure. Look at him. He's had like two bites in the last half hour. He's anorexic."

"He's not anorexic," the Scarecrow said, without bothering to look in their direction. "And he's not deaf, either."

_So he _can _be coherent._ Sheepishly, Abigail stood, wincing at the resounding crack throughout her spine as she did. She stepped through the doorway, Anika close behind, and made her way to the couch. "Sorry. Would you rather eat something else?"

The Scarecrow regarded his plate as if he was seeing it for the first time. Whatever lucidity he'd managed to gain seemed to have slipped back out in the last few seconds, like a light bulb giving one final spark before it went dead. "Not hungry."

"You have to eat _something._" Anika tried nudging the plate gently toward the Scarecrow. He didn't even look at it, opting instead to stare at Anika as though she'd grown a second head. Maybe in his broken mind, she had. "I can heat it back up if you want."

The Scarecrow sighed.

"She's going to keep pestering you about it until you've got something in your system." Abigail hoped she seemed sympathetic toward his cause. Leaning forward, she added in what she hoped the Scarecrow took as a conspiratorial whisper, "If I were you, I'd eat as much as I could without making myself sick now so she would leave me alone about it for as long as possible."

He considered this, biting softly at his chapped lips as he did.

Anika waited all of five seconds for his decision before taking the plate from his hands and setting off for the microwave. "You don't have to eat all of it, but you do have to eat."

There was no sign of annoyance on the Scarecrow's face as he watched her retreating back, only confusion. "I thought her hair was short." _Short._

If Anika's hair was any shorter, she'd stop looking like Peter Pan and start resembling an army recruit. "It is."

"Oh." He looked unconvinced.

"Don't get it too hot, Ani." As detached from the world as their new friend was proving himself to be, Abigail doubted he'd notice if he was burning his tongue on food. Or, if he did notice, she wasn't sure he would care enough to stop.

"I won't."

Abigail ran a hand through the Scarecrow's hair. It was thick and wavy and begging for a brush, but there was little point in salvaging it this late in the evening. It had been sticking out every which way all day long, but attacking his hair while he was feeling nauseated and dizzy wasn't something she'd imagined he'd appreciate. "How did you meet Jackie?"

For someone so catlike, he didn't respond well to being petted, eyes narrowed as he fidgeted, moving enough to broadcast his discomfort but not enough to dislodge her hand. She kept at it anyway, if only to keep his attention.

"The Joker," Abigail clarified when he didn't respond. "How did you meet him in Arkham?" It would have to have been in the cafeteria or the rec room or something like that. Granted, she couldn't see Jackie being allowed access to those things, but maybe there was a rule that all the patients had to have free time. It couldn't have been anything like group therapy. Letting Jackie near other patients at all was a dangerous idea, but she could hardly start to imagine the chaos any group discussion would devolve into the moment Jackie had the chance to speak.

"The doctors let us talk." His words were tinged with obvious distaste, though Abigail couldn't tell if it was directed toward the hospital or the hand still stroking his hair. It was all she could do to keep her jaw from dropping at the revelation. A psychiatrist—more than _one _psychiatrist, and presumably the asylum's administrator as well—had decided it would be a good idea to let the city's two most destructive criminals speak to each other. No wonder the success rates at that place were so terrible.

The microwave beeped and the Scarecrow, who had been on the verge of squirming away, froze in place like a startled rabbit. So he didn't like loud noises. Or maybe just unexpected ones. Or maybe just microwaves. She filed all that away for future reference as Anika appeared in the doorway with the plate of reheated rice.

"Here you go." Anika put the plate on his lap, waiting, and Abigail lowered her hand. When his first act was to sit and stare blankly, Anika took that hand and placed the fork into it, then guided it back to the plate.

The Scarecrow continued to imitate his namesake by sitting there like an inanimate object.

"You need to eat." Anika tried guiding his hand to lift the rice onto the fork. The Scarecrow allowed his hand to be moved. He didn't act defiant or even apathetic. If he was being purposefully difficult, he gave no indication. Abigail was inclined to think their houseguest was simply too distracted with whatever was going on inside his head to focus on trivial things like adequate nutrition. Or maybe he assumed that scarecrows didn't need food.

Abigail, struck with inspiration, reached out and ruffled the Scarecrow's hair again.

His eyes flitted to meet hers, pale blue and cold enough to freeze beer.

"You should eat."

He continued to glare, and she ruffled again.

The Scarecrow muttered something that she couldn't make out, mouthed it again, and turned back to the plate. It didn't take a third stroke to coax him into moving the fork to his mouth. Manipulating the mentally ill shouldn't feel this rewarding.

From the hallway, Abigail heard a door click. She took her eyes away from the Scarecrow's culinary progress and turned toward the hall as Adrian appeared, sliding his phone into his pocket. "Any luck?"

"Possibly." He didn't expound, but he didn't have to. His less-than-thrilled expression made it clear that whatever solution he'd found wasn't ideal. Perhaps it would take days to get the proper drugs, or maybe he hadn't been able to find an ideal substitute. Whatever it was—and she intended to find out when the Scarecrow wasn't in hearing range—they'd have to make the best of it. They didn't have much choice to the contrary.

Typical Jackie, giving away a pet without providing any of the supplies needed to care for it. He was going to have a stern talking-to the next time he showed up. Not that he would care, but it might provide her with some catharsis.

Abigail nodded and turned back to the Scarecrow, who had once again abandoned the plate, this time in favor of staring at Adrian. Either Adrian or the wallpaper, anyway. It was hard to be sure. She reached out to stroke his hair again, and his hand shot up and grabbed hers. _Quick learner._

"You should—you bite your nails?" Abigail maneuvered her hand to gain control of his, bringing it closer to her face. His nails were at uneven lengths, bitten nearly to the quick.

"Let go," he muttered, with a half-hearted attempt to pull free. _Go._

She didn't, staring transfixed despite the way it turned her stomach. Abigail had always had a thing about fingernails. She didn't know what it stemmed from. Her brother's line of work had made her acutely aware of just how important hygiene was. Sometimes patients were rushed in with conditions so dire that there wasn't even time to snap on a pair of gloves. And her father had always had long, filthy nails, so there was that. Whatever the reason, she had always kept her nails short, cleaned, and, in the case of her toenails, which had no business rummaging in a person's body, painted. "You shouldn't do that."

She moved his hand again, examining it from a different angle, and her arm rubbed against his, pulling down the slightly overlarge sleeve.

His skin was marred with cuts.

Maybe marred wasn't the right word. There weren't many—she'd pulled his sleeve down to the elbow and only counted four—but they were long and reddened. She'd seen them last night, now that she thought back on it, but they hadn't seemed as striking then, what with Jackie serving as his usual distraction. Now, when they were inches from her face and the clown wasn't there to demand attention, they were all-encompassing.

"Are those self-inflicted?" Anika probably thought her voice was at a low whisper. Suffice to say it wasn't, but the Scarecrow, who had transferred the fork to his other hand and was now struggling to eat left-handed, didn't glance in their direction.

Adrian was sliding the Scarecrow's hand out of hers, studying the cuts. "Possibly. Even if they weren't, I'd say he's been scratching at them."

So their scarecrow was a self-injurer. It might have been nice if Jackie had mentioned that.

"I'll get bandages," Adrian added, releasing the man's hand. "And disinfectant. Watch him."

Anika stood as their brother moved back down the hall, stretching. "I'll get the nail polish."

It had been a very trying day and Abigail couldn't help but gape. "What?"

"Well, if his nails are painted, he might remember not to bite them."

Abigail could only shake her head, transferring the fork back to the Scarecrow's left hand. Jackie was going to get more than a stern talking-to whenever he returned. And the next time he brought something over, it had better be low maintenance. Maybe a puppy.


	8. Mermaid

AN: Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

The streets were lined with neon.

That should have been a comfort. The worst parts of the Narrows had hardly any lights at all; the streetlights defunct or destroyed and the businesses boarded up. Some of them had closed when the toxin had driven out inhabitants and, with them, the income and others long before that. Some had fallen into disrepair decades ago, as far back as the start of Gotham's economic crisis, when the Waynes had been murdered. Such abandoned properties were ideal for drug deals or labs, or gang warfare. No one who valued their life would intrude on those locations. Even cops wouldn't go in without reinforcements. Nine times out of ten, a bloodbath or shootout would occur in those worst areas of the city. Moving into the relative safety of Gotham's red light district should have been a relief.

Ballard, who had lost all sensation from the wrist up by gripping the steering wheel so tightly, found it hard to take comfort in their surroundings.

The Joker studied him from the passenger seat, tilting his head. Anger was still radiating from the clown in waves, the silent tension between them so thick it was almost palpable, but he'd rolled down the window in between barking orders and rode for a few minutes with his head hanging out like a dog, and that had improved his mood to some extent. At the very least, he seemed to be giving thought to his surroundings now instead of just glaring at everything in sight. Unfortunately, his attention at current was focused on his chauffeur.

"You develop some sort of, uh, neurolo_gi_cal disorder while I was out?"

Ballard shook his head, biting down on his tongue.

"You're twitchy."

_Don't say it. _Don't _say it._ Telling the Joker that confronting Maroni, guns blazing, would be tantamount to putting a gun in his mouth and squeezing the trigger would be absolutely true. It would also be absolutely fatal. The last time one of the Joker's recruits had dared to a plan, the clown's response had been…less than accommodating. For a moment, he'd just sat, tongue working at the inside of his scars as he thought. The only noise during that time had come from the cats yowling in the alley outside, and in that moment, Ballard had foolishly thought that the man might keep his life. Until the Joker had cleared his throat, stood, and said flatly, "Ya know, if you can't say anything nice, you really shouldn't say anything at _all._" An innocent enough statement, but his tone had made it a death sentence.

The Joker had made another pair of men hold the poor bastard down. He'd forced the man's jaw open and sawed—_sawed_, not sliced, even though the blade of his knife had been smooth—through the tongue, ignoring the screams, the gagging, the ineffectual bites to the clown's wrists. He'd withdrawn his hand, the tongue a bleeding, twitching mess in his palm, the nerves still firing inside it. That was when Ballard—and half a dozen others—had lost it, stomach heaving its contents onto the floor. The Joker had opened the window and thrown the organ to the strays below before he returned to his victim, shouting "Cat got your tongue! Cat got your tongue!" between bursts of laughing, kicking at the unconscious body over and over until the man had choked on the blood in his throat.

Ballard could taste his own blood now. He'd bitten his tongue to the bleeding point. "I—I haven't had any coffee this morning."

The Joker considered this, then gave a short hacking sound that may or may not have been a laugh. "Park here."

Ballard's heart skipped a beat, which was quite an accomplishment considering how fast it was hammering. He was either going to be killed by the mob or by a psychopath in poorly applied makeup, and while the mob might provided a faster and less agonizing exit route—though, considering what a thorn the Joker had been in their side, he doubted it—he wanted nothing more than to live through the night, a hope that was wavering more and more with every word that came out of the Joker's mouth. Things had changed since the clown was committed and not for the better. It used to be that the city's organized crime syndicates had tolerated each other. Oh sure, there had been arguments over territories and the like, and more than a few shootings, but for the most part, the mobs had acknowledged what was theirs and what wasn't, and their truce, however shaky, had held. Hell, they'd managed to work _together _when the Batman had left them with no other options, however strained those relations were. But after the Joker had burned their funds, those interactions had deteriorated into all out warfare, with each gang out to grab all that they could for themselves.

And, unsurprisingly, none of them had amiable feelings toward the Clown Prince of Crime.

To confront a don now would mean instant death, if they were that lucky.

The Joker was nothing if not resilient, and Ballard knew full well that his employer was vicious. The man had once committed murder with a pair of plastic chopsticks, for God's sake. And he hadn't even gone for the eyes. But to charge into one of Maroni's clubs, where the man was sure to be more than well-protected, with nothing more than a few guns, some knives, and another man for back-up…there was no way. There was just no way. These weren't terrified bystanders or overly-cocky street punks. This was the mafia. And they wouldn't even have the element of surprise, if the club in question had security cameras, and what club in Gotham City didn't?

Ballard was as good as dead. He was just running on borrowed time now. "Boss—"

"Keep the car running."

"I just don't—what?" In his line of work, Ballard was no stranger to head trauma, and that was how it felt now. Like he'd just been slammed upside the head with a lead weight. The Joker didn't want him to come along on the suicide mission. He couldn't even process if that was a good or a bad development. He was too busy gaping like an idiot.

"The car. Keep it running. I won't be long."

The reaffirmation of this knowledge did nothing to improve Ballard's mental state. Rather, it made his confusion worse. Ballard found himself losing all meaningful muscle control, only managing to move his eyes as he gaped. And he did, eyes moving past the Joker and focusing on the neon-lit building behind them. _Mermaid._

The Joker had directed them to the Mermaid. It was one of the clubs Maroni owned, yes, but it was a gay bar. No, a _drag _bar. A mafia don wouldn't be caught there no matter how profitable it was even if he was into that. It would mean humiliating himself, not only in the eyes of his crime family, but every mob in Gotham. _So why did the Joker bring us here?_

"I'm gonna take your stunned si_lence _as a yes," the Joker said, arching a brow before he turned to walk away.

The minutes ticked by. Cars came and went down the road, patrons in line to the clubs on the street were admitted, and others walked out, giggling and chattering with their companions. The hands on Ballard's watch continued in their small circle, but as the time passed, he found himself still incapable of any other thought but _What the hell?_ It repeated through his mind over and over, like a mantra. _What the hell?_ Maroni couldn't be _there._ Even if he was, how would the Joker _know? _And why would he go in without even one reinforcement? He had to know that even _he _couldn't take down a don without support.

Ballard had never questioned the Joker's intelligence. The man was out to lunch—out on a year-long cruise, even—but that didn't diminish his genius. The Joker's insanity had never hindered his plans, not to Ballard's knowledge. Was he witnessing the clown's first—and almost certainly last—misfire?

And then he was back, strutting to the car from a side alley, as casual as he'd been on his way in. There was no limp to his step, no visible injuries. Even his hair wasn't mussed past its usual point of disarray.

_What. The. Hell._

He refused to believe it. Ballard's mind rejected the possibility the millisecond the information presented itself. Absolutely not. Absolutely _not_. It was impossible even for the Joker. Even if he entertained the possibility that the clown had somehow pinpointed the exact club where the head of the mafia could be found, got inside without being stopped by a bouncer or spotted on camera, and managed to kill his way to Maroni in less than ten minutes—and he _wasn't _entertaining it, not for one second—there was no way the Joker could have accomplished all that without a drop of blood on his person. It just wasn't possible. Ballard had to be hallucinating. Maybe the pressure from the thought of being made to confront Maroni had snapped his mind. Hell, maybe he was still driving to Maroni's, and the fear of horrible death had caused him to invent a different set of circumstances in which everything went perfectly and he wasn't involved. Maybe his joint had been cut with something besides marijuana and he was having chemically-induced delusions. Maybe he was still asleep in bed with Amber, and this whole thing was nothing more than a horrible dr—

The Joker pulled the passenger door open and slid into the car. The neon reflected off his face, making his eye shadow glimmer faintly and turning the lipstick an even more vibrant shade of red. If this was a dream, it was the most realistic Ballard had ever had. The Joker returned his curious stare, tilting one head to the side and sucking in air faintly, as if he was actually concerned. "You _sure _you haven't developed some kinda spasm?"

"I," Ballard managed. The effort it took to form words nearly knocked him out. "You—how—"

The Joker, looking genuinely amused for the first time all night, shook his head and flipped down the visor. He pulled off his gloves, revealing torn, bloodied skin beneath, and slipped one hand into his pocket, retrieving a small jar made of clear plastic that appeared to be full of—

"Makeup?" The Joker's damaged hands were dipping into the container, spreading the cream overtop of his face powder, as the wires that had once connected thoughts in Ballard's mind began to fray and smoke. "You were—you were stealing _makeup_?"

The Joker stopped smearing the stuff over his face, frowning. "I didn't steal, I _asked. _You'd be surprised how far a little po_lite_ness can get ya, Ballard."

Unbelievable. _Unb_e_lievable. _This entire excursion, the sudden spike in Ballard's blood pressure, the invasion of his privacy and loss of his girlfriend, all so the Joker could threaten a drag queen into giving him face paint? It ought to be a huge relief. As it was, Ballard was yet again too preoccupied with staring blankly to process emotions. "But you were—you said—Maroni—"

"Maroni?" The Joker stopped applying the makeup a second time, tilting his head. "Yeah, it's his club. Or his brother's now. What difference does—oh." His hands came up again, but not to spread the cream across his features. Instead, he was trying and failing to stifle his giggles, and Ballard doubted he was trying that hard to begin with. "You—you _actually _thought I was going after Maroni? You thought _Maroni _was in there and I was—I—" That was the last intelligible thing the Joker got out before his words dissolved into laughter, body shaking with mirth.

Ballard was too swept away in a sudden and wonderful wave of relief to feel irritation at the laughter in his expense. If the clown carried on this way, Ballard wouldn't be surprised if the ache in his head progressed into a migraine, but he found it hard to care about that either. He could handle a little pain if that meant getting out of this with all his brain matter still inside his skull.

"God, no," the Joker managed, wiping at his eyes. It left smears of white and black on the sleeve of his coat, which the clown didn't acknowledge as he pulled the seat belt across his body. "_Christ_, Ballard. Maroni's a businessman. It's Inde_pen_dence Day. We're gonna give him at least one day off before tha_t_ visit."

_Goddamn it._

* * *

AN: I chose Mermaid as the name of the club because of the popularity of mermaids in the transgender community, particularly among transgender children. (Yes, I know that drag queens and transgenders are different, but there are transgendered and transsexual people who participate in drag shows). Mermaids are wildly popular, particularly among male to female transitioning children, to the point that the UK's transgender website is called "Mermaids." It's theorized that this is because the mermaid is clearly female on top, but ambiguous on the bottom.


	9. Endurance

AN: My advertisement for the week: If you haven't seen _Inception_, do. It's ridiculously awesome and creative and just all around great. Plus, there's lots of Cillian Murphy (who stole the show as far as I'm concerned).

Happy birthday, Lily Mae Ray!

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

Teresa was out of a job.

There was no pink slip waiting at her desk when she arrived in the morning. Dr. Arkham hadn't called her in or sent a memo telling her to clear out her locker. She hadn't been called down to the head office and had it gently suggested that it would be better for everyone involved if she found a new place of employment. No email telling her to clear out, and no phone call telling her not to bother coming in. None of it mattered. She'd hidden abuse, then reported it during the hospital's greatest scandal. Both were cause enough for termination, and the first gave Dr. Arkham an excuse to kick her to the curb without making it seem like he was doing it because she shed light on the hospital's poor conditions.

She was gone. The actual firing was little more than a formality at this point.

And now she found herself lurking outside of the administrator's office, waiting for Dr. Arkham to hang up the phone so she could step inside and make that formality a reality. Get herself fired before she'd even had her morning coffee break. It had seemed like such a great idea on the walk down.

_Because it is. Do you want to spend the rest of the day waiting for him to call you down here and do it himself?_

Yes. Yes, she did. When Teresa was five, she'd been separated from her parents for ten minutes of sheer terror at a state fair before she managed to locate an official who made the announcement that led to their tearful reunion. Up until the night that the Joker threatened to blow up the ferry with her friends onboard, that had been the most terrifying experience of her life. Then there had been the day when she met the clown face to face. But now, listening to Arkham's voice from the hall, at the anger he was so clearly feeling and so poorly masking, this moment trumped any of those times. If ever the asylum needed a scapegoat, she would be it. And worst of all, she would deserve it.

From the other room there was a terse goodbye and the sound of a receiver being slammed down against the cradle.

_Breathe, Teresa. You know what's coming. Just do it fast._

Like pulling off a Band-Aid. Only this Band-Aid was responsible for all her income and directly affected whether or not other Band-Aids would be willing to employ her. By some miracle Teresa managed to keep what little breakfast she'd forced into herself down as she braced herself, inhaled deeply and stepped forward—

—Only to be shoved out of the doorway as Dr. Adams forced her way in. "Pull yourself together, Arkham."

"Excuse me?" Teresa couldn't see Dr. Arkham's reaction. Dr. Adams was standing in front his desk, or rather, leaning over it with her hands slammed down on the top. None of the other asylum employees would dare try that, not even the biggest orderlies. None of the other employees managed to be so awe-inspiring and terrifying at once, but judging from Arkham's tone, he wasn't amused by the performance. Teresa felt the overwhelming urge to take cover before things came to blows, but she was rooted to the spot. Her body had decided it needed to see this train wreck, and the signals from her mind to the contrary fell on deaf ears.

"You can't stay holed up in your fortress while the press runs wild. You have to get out there now and start damage control before—"

Metal scraped across tile. Arkham had stood up. Teresa managed to pull herself behind the corner, just out of view, but she couldn't obey the impulse to flee. "We've _had _a press conference. We've got no leads on the clown, we're under investigation, we've got no funders left—"

"We have Wayne."

Arkham's laugh held none of the madness in the Joker's giggle, but in that instant, it managed to be every bit as terrifying. "A lot of good _that _will do for our public image. Maybe if we're really lucky, Paris Hilton will lend _her _support—"

"I wouldn't burn any bridges if I were you. You can't afford it."

"What do you want from me?" His voice broke. The sound made Teresa's blood run ever colder than the laugh. "The asylum is _finished_, Ruth."

"Really? Because I was here all of yesterday and I missed the part where the cops shut us down." In contrast, Dr. Adams had never sounded more steady. It sounded like a bitter, desperate resolve, but it was resolve all the same.

"You know what I mean. We've had five murders in a week, and now the _Joker's _loose with Crane, barely a year after the mass breakout. We _can't r_ecover from that."

"No, no we can't. Not if you hide in here and don't make any attempt."

There was a slamming sound from within. Something had been knocked off the desk. Teresa pressed her head against the doorframe, hardly daring to breathe as she listened, but there were no further sounds apart from distressed, heavy breathing. The fight had yet to become physical. A week ago, she'd have laughed at the idea of the hospital administrator and one of his most valued doctors coming to blows. But then, a week ago this situation would have been too surreal for her to imagine. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to _endure._" Another, lesser sound of impact. Maybe Ruth had slammed her hands against the desk for emphasis. "I want you to _change _things. You can't just close your eyes and wait for this to be over. If you want to have any hope of keeping this place running, you have to institute changes before the GPD demands it. You have to make yourself visible and get the public on your side again."

Another laugh. This one lacked the anger of the first, though it was still devoid of humor. It was a short, pained sound that could easily become a sob, and just listening to it made Teresa's chest ache. "They're never going to be on our side, Ruth. They weren't before, and this isn't going to change their minds."

"They will if you show them that you're _human._ That you believed your asylum was protecting the patients and you were as shocked and betrayed as the rest of the city to find out that you weren't. That it was an honest mistake. You can't hide from the world and wait for it to fuck itself. You have to get their sympathy and you have to get it now."

A pause. A long one. Teresa's neck was starting to cramp from the odd position that she'd tilted her head, but she couldn't bring herself to move it even if she wanted to. Finally Dr. Arkham spoke, his voice almost too soft for her to make out the words. "Why do you care so much, Ruth?"

"Because I like the security of having a job. And because this asylum was created to _help _the patients, and all we've managed to do is make the two sickest one worse before we let them loose on the city." There were footsteps and Ruth's voice was moving closer. Teresa jerked back from the doorway just in time to avoid a collision, heart rate doubled. Confronting Dr. Arkham at this point was like stepping into a spring trap, but to anger Dr. Adams would be like covering herself in barbeque sauce and walking right into a lion's mouth.

"And because I'll need an asylum when I get the Joker back," Dr. Adams muttered. Her eyes fell on Teresa then, narrowed and cold as liquid nitrogen. "Shouldn't you be in the infirmary?"

Teresa nodded, turned, and fled.

* * *

"I don't think that piece belongs in the puzzle, Thomas."

Thomas Schiff paused, regarding the jigsaw piece in his hand as though he'd just now realized he was holding it, let alone worked out that he was trying to fit a piece of something bright and red into a picture of a forest scene. "What?"

Lucy glanced at the television. It was still playing _Loony Tunes_, old episodes that she barely remembered from her childhood. Ordinarily that would have interested her. Who didn't want the chance to be a kid again while hiding behind the excuse that nothing else was on? In better circumstances, she'd be sitting on the couch, rapt with attention, while Dr. Crane sat beside her and she pretended that they were on speaking terms. But there was no sign of Dr. Crane or the Joker, and now Lucy was perfectly willing to forsake her childhood if that meant a glimpse at the news.

They'd shown nothing but the news yesterday, the nurses and orderlies all gathered around the nurses' station whispering the latest gossip back and forth, while the patients who were coherent enough to realize the circumstances did the same in their own groups. Lucy was fairly sure she'd lost at least two pounds and more than a few strands of hair from the stress of yesterday. It wasn't even the Joker that concerned her, beyond what the clown could do to Dr. Crane.

_Dr. Crane. _Even thinking his name brought tears to her eyes, and Lucy blinked rapidly to dry them, shaking her head. Jeremiah Arkham had gotten sick of the uproar and banned the news station from the rec room as well as the break room, and all of today's newspapers were taken. Thinking about it would only lead to more panic, but now that she'd started she couldn't stop. "It doesn't match any of the colors on the picture, see?" She held up the box the puzzle had come in, handing it over when he reached out.

Thomas studied the picture intently, tilting the box from side to side as if that would reveal a sudden burst of red that had been lurking behind the trees. Lucy still wasn't sure what to make of him. The three days of time they'd spent together had all but nullified her resentment toward the schizophrenic for his ability to both gain and maintain Dr. Crane's attention, but she had no idea what to think of him as a person. He was so withdrawn, so out of touch with the world.

She wondered if that was what had made him so close to Dr. Crane.

"It was in the box," Thomas protested, though he had to glance at the box again to reassure himself. There were a few other mismatched pieces in the pile, and he gathered those as evidence. "See?"

"I think someone mixed up the puzzles. This one was probably missing a few pieces, so they tried fitting in different parts." To her knowledge, there wasn't a single puzzle in Arkham Asylum that wasn't missing several pieces. Much as there wasn't a board game that had been purchased after the 1980s.

"Then they wanted to be here." With renewed vigor, he continued trying to place the red piece in with the green despite the fact that it was several times larger and didn't have any openings on the side that he was trying to connect. "Their puzzle must not have been good."

"Right. I'll just keep looking for edge pieces, all right?"

Thomas didn't nod. She wasn't entirely sure that he'd heard.

The hospital was supposed to have kept Dr. Crane safe. Not raped or beaten, and definitely not unprotected in the streets of Gotham with a scarred terrorist. It had failed him on every level Lucy could think of, and probably more that she had missed, and she couldn't blame him for wanting to get away, assuming that he'd gone willingly. But even so, that same gossip had informed her that Dr. Crane had completely lost it after Lotter's death. Lucy couldn't bring herself to believe it; the doctor's reserve had always been his key feature even after he'd been poisoned and locked up. She didn't want to believe that he'd fallen apart, but if he had and he was out on his own while entirely out of touch, well, the thought brought tears to her eyes again and made her stomach clench.

There was no question that Arkham had failed Dr. Crane. But to be left alone with the Joker, or open to assault from monsters like the Batman or the rest of Gotham's scum that went without costumes, that couldn't be better. Lucy knew Arkham hadn't helped him and she knew that it was selfish, but she wanted him back. Broken, damaged, but back where people cared about him. And the asylum would have to change after this. There was no way they could go on this way without closing now that the abuse cases had been leaked. Maybe they would finally do him some good if he came back.

_When _he came back. Because he had to.

"There. They fit."

Lucy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and glanced down at Thomas's progress. He'd made the mismatched pieces "fit" by way of lying them beside the half-assembled puzzle without actually connecting them to anything. "See? They like it here."

She nodded, worried her voice would break and give her away if she spoke. Thomas Schiff was bizarre to say the least, and he didn't seem interested in her as a person as much as a thing that assembled puzzles with him, but he was the only one who'd been as close to Dr. Crane as she had. He was the only one who didn't gossip about the escapees and theorize horrible fates that the doctor could come to. And he was the only one who understood the loss she was suffering.

They might be even more mismatched as the picture he was assembling, but they were all each other had, and if Lucy wanted to get through the wait for Dr. Crane's return without developing ulcers or heart problems, she had to stay with him.


	10. Conversation

AN: Wow, it's been a ridiculously long time since my last update (by my personal standards, that is, I realize two weeks really isn't a big delay). I'd like to say I was busy doing something world-altering or so completely overwhelmed with life events that I didn't have time to even look at a computer, let alone turn it on and getting writing, but the fact of the matter is I've had writer's block. I then tried to curb that writer's block with a one shot, only to suffer from writer's block on that as well. Apart from a few days where I've had legitimate excuses (visiting my sister, trying to give blood and going into shock as a result), I've been gone just because my brain has refused to work. I really hope that's not the case anymore.

Thanks for all the reviews, and I'm sorry it's taken me this long to get around to the replies!

* * *

The Joker pulled the cell phone from his pocket and checked the time.

Five minutes until noon. Assuming the phone was accurate. It was the one he'd found in the glove compartment of the car he'd set on fire two nights ago, the one he'd stolen from the woman behind the counter at the florist's. The Joker didn't have a cell phone of his own or, more accurately, he didn't have a permanent one. It was beneficial to have a phone on his person, and at least one lackey needed to be aware of the number for the purposes of relaying information, but if that number fell into the wrong hands, it would be all too easy to for a plan to fall apart. The Joker preferred to operate with stolen phones, and switched them out every week or so.

If the time was accurate, and Alberto Maroni was still asleep on the other side of the bedroom doors, the man must have had one hell of an Independence Day.

Before the Joker was committed, he'd have thought little of a don sleeping in. Well, toward the end of the clown's reign of terror when Maroni's car had gone bouncing across the pavement and deprived the Italians of the most intelligent mob member in Gotham City, then yeah, sleeping on the job would have been a pretty stupid idea. But back when Sally had still be alive and well and not selling out his clown friend to the GPD, then the Italians had been by far the most powerful of Gotham's crime families, even with the pressure from the cops and the Bat. In those days, sleeping in made sense. Now that each of Gotham's crime syndicates had been crippled by the loss of their funds and the city, as Ballard had informed him, was in a bloody struggle for control again, anyone who wasn't out taking charge either had no head for business, or a spectacular hangover.

The Joker was willing to assume the latter for now. True, this on top of stealing the clown's henchmen was just asking for a paperclip to the spinal cord, but maybe the replacement Maroni was relatively new to the business. There was no sense in getting off on the wrong foot.

He raised the hand that didn't have a Glock in it and knocked out the first measure of _Il Canto degli Italiani_.

There was a gruff and less than amused voice from the other side of the door. "Unless you've got Excedrin, fuck off."

Well, somebody had woken up on the bitchy side of the bed. _He didn't even bother to say please._ The Joker decided it would be better for business relations if he didn't begin with a lecture on etiquette, and settled for knocking again. "You, uh, decent in there?"

"Who the hell is this?"

"Avon calling."

"What?"

The Joker, deciding that Maroni had had enough time by now to throw on a robe or a smoking jacket or whatever else dons wore, threw open the door and stepped inside, gun first. Behind him, Ballard and the two other henchclowns that hadn't been left guarding the hallway followed with their own pistols in hand. It had been Ballard's idea to call the others yesterday, despite the Joker's misgivings on interrupting everyone's holiday. The man had acted as though lives hung in the balance. Typical. He couldn't take a few months' vacation without everyone turning into neurotic wrecks.

Alberto Maroni, who wore a robe, not a smoking jacket, was staring at them with a look that wasn't quite fear or anger, not yet. More than anything, he looked gobsmacked. And, as the Joker had guessed, hung-over, judging from his pained expression, unkempt hair, and squinted eyes. He had his brother's eyes, though he was broader built and his hair still retained most of its color.

"Uh, hi," said the Joker, when it became clear that Maroni was not going to be a gracious host and start the introductions. "Sorry to barge in like this; we'd have called first but, uh, the number's unlisted. I'm, well, I'm guessing you know who I am as I know who you are, but I doubt you know my associates, so before we get to business I should—there's no need to pull out a gun, Al."

Maroni, who had been sliding his hand none too subtly into the nightstand drawer, froze. The fear was in his expression now. Both fear and anger, but the fear was winning out. "You—"

"All have guns?" the Joker supplied, waving his own. Maroni flinched, which was completely unnecessary. It wasn't as if he'd had his finger on the trigger. "Right, but we didn't intend to bring 'em out. It's just that, uh, your se_cur_ity wasn't pleased that we'd shown up without an appointment, and things got kinda.." He gestured with the gun again. "Messy."

"You killed them?" And now the anger overpowered the fear. The Joker was surprised at the flicker of annoyance he felt at that. Maroni had men by the dozen, and he'd still felt compelled to take the Joker's. Not that he had any attachment to them, not that he wouldn't cheerfully dispose of them himself if he thought it would be to his advantage—or just plain fun—but it was the principle of the thing. Maroni's new recruits _belonged _to the clown. And if there was one thing he hated, it was sharing.

The Joker placed his free hand over his heart and winced. "Nice. Our first face to face meeting and you're ready to assume the worst. We just pistol-whipped them a little. They're probably just asleep." He pondered that, licking his lips. "Most of 'em, anyway. Now, as I was say_ing_, I believe introductions are in order. The one standing by your armoire is Ballard. The two in the back—" he paused, giggled. "Oh, you'll love this. They're Ricky and Fred, respectively." He forced his hand over his mouth to stifle additional laughter. "Get it?"

Maroni stared blankly.

His face fell, the gleam going out of his eyes. "Never mind. So, Alfonso, Ballard, Ballard, Alfonso. Alfonso, Rick—"

"Alberto," Maroni said, without so much as an apology for interrupting. The state of society these days. "And what the fuck do you want?"

The Joker tried that "inhaling and exhaling very slowly" thing Ruthie had done so often in their sessions. "I want my men back," he said, managing to keep his tone level. "You don't need them. We can put this _lit_tle incident behind us and start—"

"No."

"No" was a word the Joker had grown accustomed to when it came from Ruth Adams. From anyone else, it made his teeth grind. "Excuse me?"

Maroni pulled the gun from the drawer, pointing it at the clown. "They're mine now. Get out."

The Joker was willing to accept the possibility that he'd temporarily stopped understanding the English language, as there was no way anyone, new to leading the mob or not, would be stupid enough to talk back to him. "Come again?"

"You heard me, clown." He had the gall to sneer. The Joker's hand clenched around his gun. Inside the glove, he could feel the cuts reopen for what had to be the ninetieth time. "Sal might have been stupid enough to get involved with you, but there's no one left who'll play your games. Gotham moved on while you were in the nuthouse, and no one's suicidal enough to give control to a psycho like you." He raised the gun, took aim at the Joker's head, despite all four guns trained on him. "Get it, freak?"

The Joker stared. He lowered the Glock, watching Maroni's smirk grow ever wider as he did. "Yeah. I get it." With a shrug, he stepped to the side, turning for the door. "Hey, Allan?"

"Alberto." Christ, his voice was so saturated with smugness that even hearing it made the Joker gag. "What?"

Without turning, the Joker flicked his wrist back and fired. There was a scream of pain and two crashing sounds. One for the gun that had fallen from Maroni's hand, and one for Maroni himself hitting the floor. The Joker spun, blowing out the other kneecap before the man could start the crawl toward his weapon.

"You know," the Joker began. He felt the sudden urge to spin the Glock on his finger and did so, grinning at the expanding bloodstain on the rug. "My mom used to say, if you can't say something nice…"

* * *

Jonathan Crane, for the first time in what seemed like decades, wanted to talk to someone.

Physically, he wasn't sure he was up to a conversation. The atenolol had cut back on the majority of the dizziness, but he still felt disoriented if he stood up too quickly or even turned his head too fast. He seemed to be developing the flu as well. Or maybe that was an exceptionally bad cold or withdrawal. Whatever it was, he ached all over and needed a sweater in the middle of the summer and was barely managing to keep down what little food the twins had forced into him with their hair-petting and their fork-guiding and their black nail polish.

Jonathan had never worn nail polish before, and if this was anything to go by, he never wanted to again. He'd leaned as far away from the stuff as he could with one girl holding his hand down and the other advancing on him with the bottle, and the smell had still be enough to make his head reel. What's more, while Joan's nail polish had been glossy and reflected light, the black kind cancelled it out, so every time he looked down it seemed as though each finger had a black rotted hole at the tip. Maybe they did. He wasn't about to touch the stuff and find out. The ever shifting pattern on the bedspread was bad enough without troubling himself over flesh-eating bacteria.

Joan. He blamed Joan for his compulsion to talk. Well, Joan and Lucy and Thomas and maybe even the Joker, but mostly Joan. It was Joan who'd sat him down in her office for centuries—or possibly hours, which seemed more logical now that he thought about it but certainly wasn't how it felt—each day and talked at him until he would mumble something back. Strange had done the same thing, but as Jonathan was asleep at the time, it didn't count. No, this was Joan's fault, and it was because of Joan that he found himself acknowledging the twin that had sat down beside him some time after they'd forced him to have lunch. It was the short-haired one, the one who looked like a brunette Tinker Bell and who, on occasion, left fairy dust behind her as she walked. Or maybe she was throwing handfuls of glitter. She was surreptitious about it if she was.

"Yes, Scarecrow?" She had four knitting needles in her hand, and Jonathan tried to work out the logistics of that before being struck with the fear of being stabbed in the eye with one—they were sharp on every side—and tried to shuffle back out of range of the bamboo instruments of death and crafting. But being still cold and miserable and dizzy, he only managed to scoot an inch or so away.

"I thought the other one did fabric things." It was the short-haired one that cooked, wasn't it? Because she was the loud one and the one who kept panicking every time he didn't inhale the dishes put before him in less than ten seconds was awfully loud about it. It was the long-haired one who kept bothering him about burlap and straw and fingerless gloves. Probably. Their hair did change lengths at odd intervals.

"She does." The twin—Anika—slid one needle back and forth, back and forth, the yarn winding around like a snake. He tried moving his eyes away from it and found that he couldn't. It was like hypnosis, only it didn't inspire outrage and a sense of violation and the desire to kill anyone in the area who had an ambiguous European accent. "'Gail's the one who's really good at making clothes. Usually I just make scarves or socks, and I'm slow about it."

"Oh."

He got the sense that she was smiling at him, though he couldn't look away from the yarn to confirm it. It was a dark blue yarn, with deeper indigo strands through it, like the tentacles of an eldritch abomination rising out of the water. Like Cthulhu in a scarf. "You must be feeling better."

Jonathan was not feeling better, but he imagined telling her that would end with him having his hand held or more bandages going on his arms to rub uncomfortably between his skin and his shirt. Or all three of them hovering over him again, the twins' faces contorted with what was either worry or humor and the brother looking completely apathetic. He doubted he could handle that, so he managed a noncommittal shrug. Even moving his shoulders made his stomach churn.

"Do you want a pair of socks?" Anika asked. The hand that had been moving one of the needles stopped, ending the arc of the yarn. The sight gave him a horrible sense of vertigo, perhaps because the bedspread between them had lengthened and her hands were now stretching farther and farther away.

"Eh?" It was all he could manage. It was about on pair with his therapy session discussions, really.

"You like socks right?" Funny, how her voice was loud as ever though she looked so far away. Jonathan felt as though he ought to excuse himself and get to the nearest bathroom before he was sick all over the blankets, but he couldn't remember which way the hallway had been and he didn't see the entrance. "I just started this one, but I could make you one instead. We have lots of yarn."

"Ah." All he needed was an "uh" and an "ih" and he'd have worked his way through all the vowels. Which was actually more than he'd done in most sessions with Joan.

"What's your favorite color, Scarecrow?"

Colors. What colors did he like? Orange and white were too much like the uniforms and the walls in Arkham. Red was like blood. Purple was the Joker's color. Yellow and brown were too close to cornfields, and so was green. Blue…well, now he couldn't look at blue without thinking of Lovecraftian sea monsters and anglerfish. "Gray."

"Gray?" She said it as though he'd just admitted to setting kittens on fire.

"Dark gray." Her hands were closer now, and she'd started rolling the yarn between her fingers. This time, it made him feel seasick instead of relaxed.

"We've probably got that," Anika said, after several decades of awkward silence. "But just gray? You don't want any stripes or designs or anything like that?"

He shrugged again and regretted it instantly when the motion made bile rise in his throat.

"What are you two up to?" A voice from behind. Female. Probably the other twin, but he was too busy trying not to vomit to confirm it.

"I'm making the Scarecrow socks. He said he'd like some."

There was a hand on his shoulder, and Abigail leaned down to smile at him. Her teeth reflected the overhead light, glittering like a shark's. "You must be feeling better."

Jonathan tried to answer but only managed to be sick on the carpet.

* * *

The Joker hadn't settled for shooting Maroni in the kneecaps. It wasn't enough that the man would likely never walk again, not without crutches. Not for the Joker, and not if someone had the gall to call him a freak. Ballard had witnessed enough murders to know there would never be a good outcome from that.

Some of those murders must have been worse than this. Ballard remembered vomiting after a few, and one that had left him shaking and on the verge of pissing himself. Those must have been worse, whatever they were. But looking at what the Joker had done to Alberto Maroni, it was hard to remember them.

Shattering the kneecaps hadn't satisfied him. He'd destroyed the joints entirely, and he hadn't used a gun to do it.

One leg was broken at the knee, the shin bent at a ninety degree angle. Bent the wrong way. The other barely resembled a leg anymore, just a mass of bruised, bloodied flesh with the bone exposed through the deepest of wounds. That had been the leg that knocked Maroni out mid-scream.

At least with the Joker's other vicious assaults, the victims had _died._

Maroni was only unconscious. The Joker had even taken the effort to rummage through the man's closet for belts to use as tourniquets. He was crippled for life, pale from blood loss, and surely as mentally scarred as he was physically wounded, but he was still alive, and it wouldn't be long before the guards they'd beaten unconscious woke up or Maroni regained consciousness and grabbed the phone the clown had left right beside his hand. The Joker had even shoved a few pillows under his head to reduce the chances of shock.

_To make an example of him_, Ballard thought, willing himself to stay calm.

"He's got a violin."

Ballard turned. "Boss?"

The Joker emerged from the walk-in closet, instrument and bow in hand. "A violin." He placed it on his shoulder and gave the bow an experimental slide over the strings, resulting in a sound not unlike a cat giving birth. "You don't mind if I take this, do you Alejandro?"

Maroni didn't stir.

"Great. Consider us even." He ushered Ricky and Fred through the door with the bow and beckoned for Ballard to follow. "Pleasure doing business with you." There was another burst of sound and Ballard didn't have to turn back to know that the Joker was experimenting with the violin again.

Ballard was going to need hard drugs to wipe Maroni's image out of his head, and he ought to pick up a pair of earplugs while he was out.

* * *

AN: The Joker's getting the name wrong partly out of disrespect, but also partly because I just don't think he cares. In TDK I've noticed that he never really looks at anyone while he's killing them, as though it's not the killing itself that's so important so much as screwing around with them in the buildup. So I figured that if he can't be bothered to look at someone, he probably can't be troubled for names.

Ricky Ricardo and Fred Mertz were the two lead male characters on _I Love Lucy. _The Joker finds the coincidence in the names of his henchmen hilarious, but no one else gets the joke, poor guy.

_Il Canto degli Italiani_ is the Italian national anthem.

"Avon calling": Avon is a makeup company that was known for going door to door selling products.


	11. Villains

AN: And here's another delayed chapter. I'd really hoped that moving back into college would get everything back on track, but as usual, life circumstances decided otherwise. I'll probably detail the experiences of my move-in later, but for now I'll just say that it was neither quick nor painless and while I intended to return to writing last night, I ended up needing a day just to relax after all the stress. That, and my friends decided that we should all get together, order Chinese, and watch _The Princess Bride_, only that ended up being pushed back until tonight. The first week back is always so chaotic.

Anyway, thanks for the reviews and again, I apologize for the delayed replies.

* * *

"He can't stay here."

Abigail couldn't say she hadn't seen this coming. Honestly, it was a miracle that Adrian hadn't evicted the Scarecrow as soon as he'd realized Jackie had gifted them a costumed criminal, especially considering that the funds provided to care for said criminal hadn't exactly been adequate. Not after the medications were added into the equation. It wasn't that her brother lacked patience, only that he'd always been more interested in the monetary aspect of his business than in helping the less fortunate. And as the Scarecrow was lacking both currency and the mental stability to earn his keep through other means, there was no practical reason to keep him around. Entertaining though Jonathan's company was, Abigail was surprised to find that she didn't feel a pang of regret at the news. She supposed that she'd resigned herself to this inevitability on some subconscious level. She knew her siblings too well by now to ever really be shocked by their decisions.

So Abigail wasn't surprised to find, upon turning to face her twin, that Anika wasn't handling the news as well. She wasn't pleading or pouting—when Adrian had his mind set on business matters, there was no chance of dissuading him—but she was twisting the bottom hem of her shirt so tightly in her hands that Abigail half-expected the fabric to split. "I cleaned out the carpet."

"I know," said Adrian.

"It didn't even stain."

"I don't think it's the vomit he's concerned about, Ani." It wasn't as though a back alley doctor who operated at home wouldn't be used to all manner of bodily fluids being tracked across the floor. Between the blood and the puke and everything else the apartment had been exposed to, Abigail wasn't sure why they still had carpeting.

"It's not. It's not safe to have him here for an extended period."

"But he isn't dangerous," Anika protested, and it occurred to Abigail that they really ought to get out of the house more, if they lacked enough normal interaction that mental hospital escapees were their closest friends. Then again, her family wasn't about to fit anyone else's definition of normal. It was all relative, really. "He doesn't have access to any chemicals and we could put, I don't know, child locks on the knife drawer, since he's too out of it to work out how—"

"I'm not worried that we'll be murdered in our beds. He'd be more likely to do damage to himself than to us, anyway." If Adrian was bothered by that thought, he didn't show it. "But having a fugitive in the house twenty-four seven is a much greater risk than having a hit man here for as long as it takes to stitch him back up."

"No one knows where—"

"No one knows where they went _yet,_" Adrian corrected. "But if anything surfaces that could lead the police here—"

"We'd all be charged with aiding and abetting." The thought hadn't even occurred to her. Being caught during a surgery was one thing. They'd still be helping a criminal and practicing medicine without a license, but the whole thing might fall under some sort of Good Samaritan protection. Letting a wanted criminal stay in their home was something else entirely, and since the Scarecrow was mentally incompetent and unable to stand trial for whatever he and Jackie had done to break out, it wasn't as if they'd be able to lessen their sentence by testifying against him. Leave it to Jackie, giving them a pet that would get them arrested.

Anika's face displayed a range of emotions before settling on "I see your point but I don't want to admit it." It was a standard for her. Between her twin's overreactions and Adrian's near-constant apathy, Abigail had no idea how she'd managed an ordinary range of emotions. "We can't just throw him out."

"I'm not suggesting we take him outside and leave him there. Either we wait for Jackie to come back and send him off then, or we have him delivered back to the asylum."

Abigail's stomach turned at that. The news broadcasts about Arkham focused on more than just Jackie's escape now. There were allegations against the hospital, allegations of inmate abuse, and they ranged from harassment to rape and everything in between. Of course, they were only allegations and could well be the product of deluded minds. The media could be blowing the issues out of proportion for a more salacious story. But…_the Scarecrow's cuts had to come from somewhere._

And even if he was self-injuring, Abigail refused to believe that the man who'd created such a potent, terrifying drug and then smuggled it into the water mains over a period of _months _was the same man currently staring off into space from their couch. Something had happened to change him while he was in Arkham and it clearly wasn't for the better.

Anika pushed her chair back abruptly, legs dragging across the kitchen floor, and the sound made Abigail jump. "Fine. I'm finishing his socks before you throw him out."

Adrian let out the faintest of sighs. Abigail imagined the costume she'd never get to make once the Scarecrow was out of the house and stood, following her sister as she pulled her measuring tape from her pocket.

* * *

There were seven of them in the row house, counting the Joker. The Joker was in the upper level of the house, still experimenting with the violin. He did, as fate—or the devil—would have it, seem to have either some experience with the instrument or the ability to play by ear. At some point in the day, he'd managed to scratch out what could pass for "Row Your Boat," provided that the performer was drunk and the violin possessed, and the clown had kept it up since. The hours of repetition didn't make the sound any smoother. Or less Satanic.

Ricky was upstairs as well, though he was on the balcony. Generally, the Joker didn't have someone keep watch over the house. It was the only occupied house in the row, one of the many that the Waynes had financed before their murder, and one of the many that had been abandoned when the Narrows were flooded with poison. But unlike the others, this one had been close to the Narrows' water main and, as a result, had been severely water-damaged. The ever-increasing mold and the neighborhood of crazy hadn't endeared the row houses to potential buyers, and the Joker's presence hadn't endeared it to the homeless. The house was just as they'd left it, with the exception of the camera system the Joker had installed through the house. That was missing, so Ricky had been relocated to the balcony.

That left the five of them downstairs. Ballard, Fred, Marshall, Darius, and Tyson. They hadn't found Kent or Roberts, meaning they were either dead or would be once the Joker tracked them down. The five of them, with only one joint between them, and it did nothing to cut down on anyone's nerves.

"Six hours," Tyson muttered, tearing at what was left of his hair. "He's been at it for _six _hours."

"Would you shut up?" Marshall, who'd spent everyone else's turn complaining that they were taking more than a puff, took a drag that lasted at least thirty seconds and continued. "You want him to hear you?"

"There's no way he can hear us over that." Fred kept his voice still though he tore the joint out of Marshall's hand. "It it's that loud down here, there's no way."

"Six fucking hours."

"Yeah, six hours. We get it. You've managed to piss me off just as much in twelve seconds."

"He was out all night, right?" Darius asked, holding the joint out to Ballard. "You were with him, weren't you?"

He nodded, stretching out the few seconds he had with the drug to the fullest, trying not to notice how little there was left.

"What difference does that make?"

"He's got to sleep eventually."

Ballard shook his head, exhaling smoke. "I've seen him go fourteen days without sleeping."

"Bullshit."

"The hell it is." The Joker _had _done it, though Ballard couldn't say how he'd managed it. It shouldn't be physically possible; Ballard had learned through overwork that even four days without sleep could cause hallucinations. Of course, this being the _Joker_, that could be par for the course. It wasn't that the man never slept; he got by on less sleep than most people, but most of the time, he did sleep. It wasn't until the end of the clown's last rampage that he'd seen the Joker forgo sleep, when throwing the city into disarray had taken precedence over both rest and food. The Joker hadn't even suffered. He'd _thrived_, as energetic and excitable as ever. Maybe even more.

Marshall shook his head. "Were you with him all that two weeks?"

"I was here."

"But were you with _him_? I mean, did you—did you follow him around holding his hand for two fucking weeks? _You_ slept, didn't you?"

The joint had reached him again, though there was almost nothing left of it. He took the last draw, nodded.

"Then he slept when you did. Simple as that."

But he hadn't. There would be no convincing them without definitive proof. And hell, he had no way of knowing that the Joker hadn't slept when Ballard was otherwise occupied. If he wanted to look at it rationally, then the clown almost certainly had.

_But he didn't._

And he hadn't, no matter what the others thought and no matter what science dictated the human body could and could not handle. Maybe the Joker was something more than human. Maybe he was something less. Whatever he was, he was something dangerous and unpredictable and something that didn't need sleep to function, and Ballard knew that as an indisputable fact.

"Yeah man, he probably—" The words died on Darius's lips as he glanced toward the ceiling, dumbstruck. For a moment, the others just stared, Ballard among them, before the same realization that had shaken the other man occurred to him. It was the music.

It hadn't stopped. The sounds of the violin drifted down from the upper level of the row house just as before, and the same song as before. The difference being that now, instead of sounding like a wild animal with its leg stuck in a trap, it sounded like a real violin producing real, flawless music.

The song ended, leaving the house in silence for the first time since their arrival. Ballard was aware that the remains of the joint in his fingers were steadily burning to nothingness, that his hand would be singed if he didn't shake it out, but in that moment he found it hard to care, mind caught between the blessed silence and the thought that the clown had known what he was doing the whole time.

Then the Joker brought the bow back to the violin and carried on, as screeching and painful as before.

* * *

"I take it that you won't be going in today, sir?"

As always, Bruce didn't glance away from the television and, as always, Alfred spared him a lecture on proper etiquette. Logically, he knew that glancing away from the television wouldn't make him miss some crucial detail of the Arkham press conference, knew that even if it did, he was recording the whole thing. But no matter how much of Batman's time was spent devoted to research, strategy, and detective work, the Batman was still a creature based in emotion, and while he knew that glancing away wouldn't change anything, he couldn't tear his eyes from the screen. "I think they'll manage without me, Alfred. Besides, I was there yesterday." True, yesterday everyone else had been excused for the holiday and he'd only been there go over the little forensic evidence from the asylum that Gordon had managed to slip him, but it was the thought that counted.

"Yes, and the day before that. I was hoping you might make this a habit."

_I was hoping the asylum would hold the clown._

He should have expected this. And on some level, he knew he had. The news of the Joker's escape hadn't shocked him. Disgusted, sickened, and enraged him, yes, but not shocked him. He doubted any confinement but a coffin could contain the clown and the asylum's track record for keeping track of its inmates was less than encouraging. But he'd allowed himself to hope, and he was disgusted with himself for it now.

_I should have kept a closer watch._

On the screen, Jeremiah Arkham was standing at the podium, making a speech regarding the asylum's concern for the safety of its patients. He spoke of the betrayal they'd felt at the discovery of the abuse allegations, the personal failure he felt for unwittingly letting the situation continue. He was quiet, humble, anguished.

He was lying.

He had to be. Jonathan Crane's medical records alone left no room for debate on the abuse. The administrator couldn't have deluded himself into believing otherwise. Anyone capable of that would be out of touch enough to deserve a padded cell of his own. "This isn't what I wanted."

"Master Wayne?"

"This." He waved a hand at the screen, unable to articulate the utter wrongness that he felt. He was barely able to comprehend it himself. Scum like Crane and the Joker had threatened to destroy Gotham, everything that he—and his parents—had worked to protect. Knowing that they had suffered as a result shouldn't pain him this much, even if it was the ethical response. "I never intended for anyone I sent to the asylum to be tortured. And it isn't just the criminals."

Alfred placed a hand on his shoulder, and while it felt as warm and comforting as it had in his childhood, it did nothing to quell his emotional discontent. "You had no way of knowing what when on in the asylum, sir. You've barely been able to leave the—"

"I knew that they'd been lax enough to put a madman like Crane in charge. And I knew about—about _this _when I donated to the hospital." Bruce brushed his hair away from his face, sighing deeply. "Maybe I should have let them sink. Let someone else take over, someone who'll actually care for the patients instead of their reputation."

"Did you expect the asylum to treat the Joker successfully?"

He managed to pry himself away from the television. There was no look of sarcasm in Alfred's features, no glitter of humor in his eyes.

"No. I don't believe he can be treated. But I didn't mean for this to—"

"But you gave him the chance. Or rather, the courts did, and you didn't take it upon yourself to change that. Not for the Joker or Dr. Crane. Was that only out of respect for due process, or did you hope, however faintly, that something would change?"

Bruce tried to reason out where Alfred was going with this and, as per usual, drew a blank. "I _hoped_, yes, but I didn't expect it. Why?"

Alfred's hand left his shoulder. "Because if you're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, shouldn't the asylum have the same chance?"

"I—"

"And considering that the only thing keeping them afloat at this point is your money," Alfred added over his shoulder, "you can always use that advantage to have your say in the reform."

Well, there was that.


	12. The State of Things

AN: This, friends, will be the semester of my discontent. I'd hoped that getting back into the routine of college life would help me get back on track with my writing, only to find that the classes I'm taking this semester are almost certainly going to delay it. Each class is assigning at least a chapter of readings per night, along with writing seven papers altogether, three short screenplays, and a fifty-thousand word _**novel **_(which has to be completed in thirty days), on top of attending class and working—and eating and socializing—all before Christmas. You're probably wondering why I don't drop a class. I'd love nothing more, but my parents are really pushing me to apply for internships, so I need to get as many classes out of the way as I can now. I'd drop one of my harder classes for an easier one, but there's really nothing available that would help toward my major, so that would make switching classes pointless.

Long story short, I'm going to try and stay as organized as possible this semester and still set aside time for fan fiction, but I know I'm a procrastinator at heart, so I apologize in advance if chapters are delayed. I'll do my absolute best to have at least a chapter a week, and more than that if I have the time.

At least next Tuesday, my birthday, is free ice cream sundae day. There is that.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Teresa." Elizabeth's voice was calm, even. "Breathe."

Breathe. It should have been easy. After all, it was supposed to be involuntary. But now, far from the comfort and familiarity of the infirmary, waiting for her turn to be interrogated and, more than likely, immediately fired, it had never seemed more voluntary, and never seemed more difficult. "I _am _breathing," she managed, and the simple act of speaking took immense effort when her lungs were completely emptied of air.

"No, you're not."

It was easy for Elizabeth. Elizabeth wasn't the one who had withheld the knowledge of the Joker's torture from both the administration and the authorities until after the man had escaped, taking half a dozen lives in the process. She wasn't the reason that the entire staff was under police scrutiny and likely to lose their jobs. And it wasn't her fault that the each and every one of Arkham's nurses—barring the ones left behind with the more troublesome patients—was currently seated outside a psychiatrist's office commandeered by the GPD, waiting to be called in for questioning.

And besides all that, Elizabeth had already had her interview and managed to return without a pink slip.

"This is my fault."

"I thought you were past this." Elizabeth's voice was firm but not harsh, the way Teresa's mother had sounded during many a lecture throughout childhood. Which, considering that Elizabeth was a mother of two, was only to be expected. And, also to be expected, it still did nothing to lower Teresa's heart rate. "You were fine before. Didn't Ruth talk to you?"

If by "talked," she meant "ordered back to the infirmary." And Teresa had been fine—well, _relatively _fine—before they'd been called into this hallway. It was one thing when she was working; caring for patients helped both with the guilt and to serve as a distraction. It was another thing entirely when she was here, sitting with the cold, uncomfortable metal of the bench pressing into her legs through the scrubs. Here, there was nothing to ease her mind or to help her atone. There was only nausea and guilt, and both were growing with each passing second. "This is my fault," she managed, just able to keep her voice from breaking.

"No, it's not."

"I've put everyone's job on the line because I was too big of a coward to—"

"Teresa." Elizabeth's hand was on her shoulder and while it made her feel more suffocated than ever, Teresa couldn't deny that it did provide an odd comfort. "Listen to me. _You _didn't put our jobs at risk, all right? We did."

"But—"

Elizabeth cut her off, voice hard as stone and leaving no room for argument. "Do you think you're the only one to see bruises on a patient? There's not a one of us who's worked in the infirmary without seeing a suspicious injury." She sighed then, her face etched with disgust and worry, and Teresa couldn't tell if the focus of that look was external or internal. "We _all _covered it up. You may be the only one who saw scars on the Joker, but that doesn't change the facts. Maybe you are going to hell in a hand basket, but you won't be without company."

It didn't make her self-disgust any less potent, but it did give her pause. "But…but the nurses who didn't work there—they haven't seen anythi—"

"Then they have nothing to be worried about," said Elizabeth, sounding as though she almost believed it herself. "Focus on yourself, Teresa. You can only take so much of the weight of the world on your shoulders before you collapse under the strain." She sat back, withdrawing her hand from Teresa's shoulder and leaving her coworker in silence with her own thoughts.

_I have to make it through this. _It seemed a dramatic change in thought from "Oh shit, I'm going to be living on the streets," but the reasoning behind it hadn't come from some well of inner resolve and strength that Elizabeth's words had tapped into. Far from it. It was a thought of pure desperation from a woman who simply had the insight to realize she'd fall apart if she lost this source of stability. She had to keep it together, to remind herself of the conviction she'd kept when she reported the abuse in the first place, before the world had gone to hell. She had to emulate that burst of strength, and pretend that she had that bravery again.

_I can do this. _Teresa took a slow breath and didn't release it until her heart stopped pounding. _I can do this. _Maybe if she said it often enough, she would believe it herself.

The door to the office opened, and Detective Montoya leaned out. "I need to speak to Teresa—"

She burst into tears. _Or maybe not._

* * *

"It went well." Ruth had never been skilled at lying through her teeth. With any luck, Arkham was either too angry or too distracted to notice.

After all, if anyone was due for a stroke of luck, it was her.

"Have you gone insane?" Jeremiah Arkham looked like his own grip on sanity was beginning to slide, between his haphazard shaving job and the hair that clearly hadn't seen a brush in at least twelve hours. Ruth considered a lecture on the importance of appearance when it came to winning the public's sympathy, but there was a time and a place, and she figured the administrator at least deserved to finish his coffee before she started in.

Even if it was his sixth cup of the day.

"I prefer optimistic."

He shoved the newspaper across the desk toward her as though she was a dog and it only took an issue of The Gotham Times to send her scampering. That, or he wanted her to read it. Arkham's body language was deteriorating as quickly as his personal grooming. "Try to be optimistic about that."

Ruth didn't bother to glance down at the paper. Coming into work these days was painful enough without adding scathing journalism to the mix. "Any idiot with a computer can send a letter to the editor. Just shrug it off."

Arkham took his steaming mug of coffee and drained it in one long gulp. "It's difficult to shrug it off when that idiot is the mayor and he's calling our actions grossly irresponsible. Impossible to shrug off, really."

_Fantastic. _They'd be closed in a week. And with the economy in this condition, Ruth would probably end up moving back in with her parents. There was only so much small town charm she could handle without resorting to violence, and she'd surpassed her capacity for that sort of thing when she'd started college. "Have you considered drinking heavily?"

He didn't smile. She hadn't expected him to. "How were things here while I was out destroying public relations? Any better?"

She couldn't decide which would be preferable: spending the day surrounded by journalist who were—justifiably—out to demonize the institution, or spending the day at the asylum, going through yet another round of police questioning. Choosing the lesser of two evils would still be a Pyrrhic victory. "I think every doctor here has grounds for a harassment lawsuit against that Detective Bullock. You know, the one built like an ox, but with half the brains?"

Again, not even a flicker of a smile. Only natural, given the circumstances, but Arkham looked as though he'd never smiled in his entire life, and considering that she seemed to be the only one invested in pulling the administrator together and saving the hospital, it was more than a little disheartening. "Do you think that would gain us the public's sympathy?"

_I think you need heavy amounts of antidepressants. And possibly less legal drugs. _"I have no idea. Is there any way to ban him from the building once this blows over?" The odds of this blowing over or of the institution ever living this down were infinitesimal and shrinking even more with each new piece of information regarding the hospital's misdeeds, but there was no point in being pessimistic even if pessimism was realistic.

He did laugh at that, but there was no humor in it. "If Wayne gets his way, that idiot will probably be back every other week, giving the patients panic attacks."

"Wayne?" For the first time today, Arkham's words registered with her as more than just a droning whine. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that the man standing between us and closing down apparently has something in his head other than partying, and it's the well-being of the mental ill." He rubbed his face. The past few days seemed to have added at least a decade onto his age. "He had me on the phone for over an hour, going on about performance reviews and patient interviews and a thousand other things I don't have the time or energy to deal with."

Patient interviews. Ruth tried to imagine patient interviews conducted on even an annual basis and felt a migraine building up at the base of her skull. In an ideal world, there would be nothing wrong with patient interviews. And among the hospital's more lucid residents, they could be perfectly useful in providing feedback on the asylum's treatment and staff. There was, of course, the minor issue that the majority of the residents were _completely out of their minds_, and since there was no way to distinguish between hallucinations, paranoia, or real abuse, each and every accusation, no matter how ludicrous, would have to be investigated.

_Life is just _beautiful.

It wasn't that Ruth wanted the complaints of patients to be ignored or abuse to slip by unnoticed, as it had with the Joker. But she didn't want to deal with this either, not now. Not when the building was still in an uproar and the loss of her patient before she could make any real progress was eating into her like an infected wound. "Has he thought about what that will mean in terms of time and manpower?"

"I don't know. Until today, I wasn't aware that he thought at all."

And after all her failed attempts to lighten the mood in his office, it was Arkham who made her smile, though she hid it behind her hand.

* * *

"There's no reason to cry."

It was easy for Detective Montoya—Renee, she'd said to call her Renee—to say that. She wasn't the one who had sat back and watched as the orderlies goaded and tortured the asylum's most dangerous patient, without a word until it was too late. She wasn't the one who was afraid to speak up even after the fact, like now, and she wasn't the one who was going to be charged with neglect or negligence or whatever else they could throw at her.

Not to mention that she hadn't been the one to lose her composure in front of the rest of her coworkers. They may have moved to the privacy of the office, but that didn't make things any less humiliating. Teresa wasn't sure how she managed the energy to freak out over how the other nurses perceived her over everything else, but apparently she did. Maybe her mind was out to get her too.

"Eas—easy for you to say," she managed, after a failed attempt not to sniffle.

"You're not here to punished."

Teresa couldn't help but laugh at that, even if there were tears still streaming down her cheeks. Maybe that was the point; a statement that ridiculous couldn't be meant seriously, no matter how tasteless a joke it made. "I covered up abuse."

"You reported it."

"After three _months._" Had it only been three months? After the initial days, when the Joker tore his own skin open and had to be brought in each morning, he'd only been back once each month for a physical, and then the morning that that orderly murdered his dog, but it felt like more than that. The way her stomach twisted when she even _thought _of the Joker's battered body, it felt like she'd been witnessing the abuse for years. "And only because I felt guilty."

"You're still the first one here to take that step." Montoya—Renee—sounded sincere, though Teresa didn't know how she could be. She didn't see how any Gotham cop could look at someone like her without disgust, considering everything they dealt with. "You reported the abuse and you documented it. That's the most help we've had in this case, do you know that?"

"I still—"

"You're not the only to cover this up." Teresa didn't need to look the detective in the eye to know that she wasn't being offered absolution; she could hear that in Renee's voice.

"That doesn't matter."

"You can't change the past, and dwelling on it isn't going to do your patients any good. Look, they still need you, and if you want so badly to make up for what you've done, then you have to do what you can to help us now."

Teresa wiped a hand across the back of her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to pretend that she wasn't one emotional upset away from hysterics. It was almost a successful attempt. "Okay," she managed, not because she was in any way all right, but because she had to make up for her transgressions somehow and considering how out of touch with her circumstances as this detective was, Teresa couldn't deny that her argument was persuasive.

"You took a stand when everyone else was still turning a blind eye," Renee said, opening her notepad. "Even if it was delayed. You're stronger than you give yourself credit for, Teresa."

_Yeah right, _she thought, but she nodded her assent regardless and tried to answer the proceeding questions to the best of her ability. She owed the patients much more than that, but it was a start.


	13. Unsatisfying

AN: Now that the first week is over and done with, I think I've discovered a method of organization that should allow me to update at least twice a week. At least until I get into midterms and finals and _writing a novel in a month. _Yes, even the mention of that is enough to send me into fits of rage, and probably will be for years to come. Ironically, Mondays and Wednesdays are meant to be the days I shouldn't be updating, but as tomorrow's my twenty-first birthday and I'm going to spend it watching _Scott Pilgrim _(yes, that is how I'm spending the twenty-first birthday), I decided to squeeze in an update now.

Just a head's up, the end of this chapter is gory, so steel your stomach now, I guess.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

Was there a phobia for feeling that one's life had lost purpose?

He knew the fear of failure—atychiphobia—and the fear of functioning at all—ergophobia—but Jonathan drew a blank when it came to fearing that one's life itself was without meaning. He supposed he could devise a term himself until he had a book on hand to determine if that fear did have a name, but he hadn't studied Latin since he was an undergrad and honestly, it hardly mattered. He didn't fear that his life had become pointless. He knew that it had.

There was probably a mental illness for that. The closest he could come up with now was solipsism syndrome, but that was a belief that one's world was not real, not that one's life had become a cosmic joke without a punch line. And anyway, this feeling of utter worthlessness wasn't a sign that his grasp on reality was slipping, even if all of his sensory input was. The toxin had destroyed his mind, likely beyond repair, and Jonathan was well aware of that, and either it or that monster of an orderly in Arkham had destroyed his ability to care about anything.

"You know," said the long-haired twin, Abigail, who was marking fabric with chalk and whose eyes looked completely black, "you're not like I expected. I mean, I don't know what I expected the Scarecrow to be like but you—you're calmer, I guess."

_Don't feel much like a scarecrow today._ Jonathan wasn't sure where he'd heard those words before, but he supposed it must have been in a song, as the thought was accompanied by a sudden burst of music, so loud and vivid that he had to look around for the source of the noise. He supposed it must have come from his own mind, as the room lacked a stereo, the television was off, and last he checked, chalk on fabric didn't sound like blues music. Abigail's dark eyes—they didn't even reflect light—were still on him when he came to that conclusion, so Jonathan said the first thing that came to mind. "Why am I still here?"

Her eyes may be blank, but her face could still demonstrate guilt. If that was guilt. It could be annoyance. Or indigestion. If she wasn't suffering from some form of gastric distress, Jonathan couldn't see why she should be shocked that he knew about their discussion. They'd had it in the kitchen, which didn't even have a full wall to close it off from the living room and, by extension, the rest of the apartment. They hadn't even closed the door. If there was a door. Sometimes there seemed to be one and sometimes not. He tried not to dwell on it. "Because we want to make sure you have a place to go." She paused, rolling the chalk in her fingers and leaving white streaks on her skin. "And you might be able to stay."

Doubtful. He was either going to be cast out unceremoniously or have his organs harvested for the black market, and then be cast out unceremoniously. He couldn't imagine they'd want to keep him as a houseguest even if finance weren't an issue. He certainly wouldn't want to have himself as a houseguest.

Down the hall, there was the rattle of a key in the lock—assuming, of course, that they weren't being invaded by rattlesnakes—and the sound of the front door opening. He glanced at Abigail and watched her raise her head before he followed suit. It was a trick he'd used at the asylum when he remembered it, to keep himself from responding to the nonexistent. He hadn't remembered it often.

"I'm back." The other twin. The loud one. Either she'd been shopping, or she'd taken to carrying bags with her at all times like a homeless person. The latter seemed improbable, but he'd never kept up with current fashions. "Is everybody all right with linguini?"

"Are there—"

"No, Scarecrow, there aren't any strawberries in it." Anika had managed, despite all she was carrying, to have one hand free enough to ruffle his hair. He still maintained the presence of mind to be annoyed about the contact, at least. "Here." Her hand disappeared into one of the bags, reemerged with something that Jonathan took to be a large, dark brick, which she then dropped into his lap. It didn't feel like a brick.

"It's a book," she said, as though he couldn't see that for himself. "It's yours. Well, it's yours for three weeks, anyway. I stopped by the library." She proceeded to stand beside him in silence, either expecting a thank you or suffering from a sudden bout of paralysis. Whatever the reason for her sudden lack of motion, Jonathan ignored it and turned the book over.

_The Gift of Fear_, it was called. _Fear. _If he were capable of feeling like more than an apathetic bystander to his own life, he might have been insulted. In an instant of observation, he could deduce more about fear than this girl would ever learn in her life, and yet she had the presumption to think that anything with the word "fear" in the title would hold his interest. _Charming._

As it was, he couldn't even bring himself to give her a disdainful glare. He _had _been the Master of Fear, and that was the fact that kept him going after the poisoning and the indignities suffered in Arkham Asylum. It was what had kept him from collapsing into madness until he'd been able to seek out revenge in the madhouse's broom closet. A personal fear mastered. Obliterated. That should have been the turning point, the moment where he fought through the damage the toxin had wrought on his mind and made his triumphant return to his former glory. And the experience _had_ altered him, but not for the better. That desire for revenge had defined him once he'd lost everything else in his life, and once that was gone, there was nothing left but the madness.

And, as was his luck, he couldn't even have a spectacular descent in insanity. An uneventful journey into banality. _It figures._

There were footsteps behind him, one twin leaving to start dinner and the other attacking his arm with what was either a measuring tape or an extremely inefficient whip. _Master of Fear. _It didn't feel as though the title fit anymore, but he couldn't think of anything to replace it. He wasn't the master of anything in particular, besides being an unwelcome and unwilling houseguest.

Though really, there were worse places to be stuck. At least the apartment was lacking in tigers. So far.

* * *

Gotham was slipping through his fingers.

It would sound overly dramatic if it weren't so accurate. All the years spent studying martial arts and theatricality, the research into each and every member of the city's crime families, each increasingly complex request Lucius Fox would fulfill, and everything else that went into being the Batman, none of it amounted to anything if Bruce Wayne wasn't able to put on the suit and take to the streets.

And now that he'd taken responsibility for the murders Harvey Dent committed, he couldn't.

"You need sleep, Master Wayne."

Alfred, as usual, had slipped into the study without as much as a footstep. Bruce didn't bother to turn around. Life was trying enough without adding the piercing stare of a disapproving butler to the mix. "It's noon."

"Your sense of time remains accurate as always." There was the faintest rustle of fabric, indicating that Alfred had actually checked his watch. "Your sense of self-preservation, however, is rather predictably lacking. When you haven't slept all night, sir, it hardly matters what time it is now."

"I'm working." Now that Batman was confined, hiding in the shadows to avoid arrest more than to strike fear, and working on little more than the meager information Gordon could risk slipping him, the research became all the more vital. Crimes had to be predicted before they occurred, and the police force surreptitiously forewarned. Far easier said than done when nine times out of ten, he couldn't go out to interrogate a suspect or investigate a scene before others had been there to contaminate the evidence.

"Working yourself toward a stroke, perhaps."

Bruce opted to let silence fall between them. There was no arguing with the man; even if he hadn't been pushing himself to the last limit, Alfred simply couldn't be argued against on any issue. He could silence even the most formidable opponent with nothing more than a meaningful look, which was precisely why Bruce had yet to turn to face him. Beyond that, he was pushing himself too hard, but there was no other choice. So he'd lose a few hours of sleep, and so Wayne Enterprises may go for more than a week without their CEO making an appearance. Anything that kept him from losing Gotham entirely.

Batman was a creature based in fear. For all the good he'd done for the city—and Bruce desperately wanted to believe that, even after the Joker, he'd done more good than harm—his _modus operandi_ was still to terrify, to exploit the fear of Gotham's criminals in order to protect the innocent. In theory, a Batman who killed should drive that terror even further; few things in life were more frightening than an enemy who could appear from nowhere and who wouldn't hesitate to tear his victims apart.

But the theory fell apart if the Batman didn't appear, and since he'd made the decision to take the blame for Dent's murders, he couldn't.

The crime had halted, for a day or so after the news that the GPD had turned against the Batman. Not stopped altogether, of course; the city was in ruins, and like any city after a disaster, stores were looted and houses robbed. But the gang warfare had seen a standstill, and even the petty crimes seemed diminished. Bruce liked to think that this was his influence as much as it was the mob taking time to recover from their own losses. For a few days, perhaps they had stalled from fear, waiting for the Bat to come after them as they believed he had done to Maroni.

But the days went by without the Bat, and the days had barely formed a week before the city was back to a bloodbath. Worse than before, even. It was as bad as things had been when he'd first returned to Gotham, and with the Joker on the loose again, there was no way it wouldn't become far, far worse.

He couldn't sleep while the Joker was unleashed on the city. He couldn't sleep while Jonathan Crane was out of the asylum, while the Belarusians were expecting a weapons shipment that he had yet to discern the location of, while the Italians and the Chinese and while every other crime family in Gotham resorted to ever-escalating violence while they struggled to re-define their territory.

Gotham deserved better than that. His parents would have agreed.

He didn't hear Alfred's footsteps approaching his chair, too absorbed in his notes to notice the faint clink of ceramic against the wood of the desk. Nor did he register the click of the door as Alfred left the room. It wasn't until several minutes after the butler had excused himself that a familiar scent drifted toward him, and Bruce raised his head to see the cup of coffee the man had left behind.

* * *

"I'm trying this new thing." The Joker kept eye contact as he spoke, sliding one hand over the floor, searching by feel for his scalpel. It shouldn't be this difficult to find. After all, the room only held three objects—four, if he counted the soon-to-be corpse—but apparently, enough thrashing could throw even the sparest room into disarray.

Wilhelm screamed directly into his ear, making an attempt at kick that wouldn't even put an anemic toddler's efforts to shame. The Joker, out of the goodness of his heart, decided to take painfully loud wailing to mean "Fascinating, tell me more."

"See, usually," he continued, after he made sure that his friend's vocalizations hadn't caused his ears to bleed, "it's not really _killing _a person that inte_rests_ me, you understand. Breaking people, fucking with their perc_ep_tions of reality and their moral code and all that, inflicting agony, it's all well and good. But the actual killing? Not, uh, all that exciting."

He'd told what remained of his merry men just before midnight last night that he was going to bed—though he hadn't fallen asleep for a good five hours after that—and that when he awoke, he expected to be presented with the names of every Arkham Asylum orderly, and they'd risen to the occasion most spectacularly. The Joker wasn't quite sure how they'd accomplished it. Presumably computer hacking, considering how tight the police detail around the building must still be. In the end, it didn't matter where the list of names—ever so helpfully alphabetized, with addresses and phone numbers, should he be tempted to make a few prank calls—had come from. He'd told them to do it, and they'd complied. Good to know that they hadn't lost the ability to bark on command in his absence.

His group of ragtag miscreants always had been good at fulfilling his commands. Those who had survived anyway. He still smiled when he thought back to the night he'd demanded a bazooka, a Smith & Wesson M76, a copy of the film _Caligula_, and a Glock 18. The weapons were outside his bedroom door in a little over than two hours, along with the three disc special edition of Tinto Brass's epic.

Wilhelm, whose real name was Cameron Winters and who was a soon-to-be former Arkham orderly, had been another of his special delivery requests. This time, it had only taken his faithful followers an hour to provide. Wilhelm—it had struck the Joker as a more fitting name, somehow—was currently affixed to the floor thanks to the Joker's new handy-dandy nail gun, making the impalement wounds through his wrists all the bloodier as he struggle to get away from the scalpel slicing his shirt down the center. He was also, if the Joker was translating the shrieking correctly, highly intrigued and eager to hear what had changed.

"I, uh, switched that up a little bit with Hadley—you remember Hadley? I mean, you guys made enough visits to my cell, you _ought _to—" The blade slipped through the fabric of Wilhelm's shirt and deep into his flesh, and the screaming doubled in volume. And here the Joker had thought he was starting to lose his voice. "Well, anyway, I was _pret_ty focused on him before he kicked it, but that was more out of a burning desire to cause pain than wanting to have fun with it. And with Steven, I did him kinda fast, eager to get back on the town, ya know, so I didn't get much out of it. But with you—"

Wilhelm's voice finally seemed to fail him as the Joker dragged the knife downwards over his sternum, reduced to a choked gasping. He did manage a shriek when the Joker made a parallel line over the first incision, but he was back to the gagging when an identical cut was made just above his stomach.

"With you," the Joker continued, tearing absently at the skin and muscle over the rib cage while his other hand felt for the hacksaw, "with you I'm gonna see ex_act_ly how much enjoyment I can drag out of your suffering. So be a dear and try to stay conscious, would ya?"

And much as his captive struggled against his bonds, and the hacksaw cleaving through his ribcage like it was a Thanksgiving wishbone, he did honor that wish. Of course, the Joker wasn't sure how much of that was the desire to be helpful and how much of it was the rather large amount of speed he'd filled Wilhelm's bloodstream with before they'd begun.

Whatever the reason, his heart or his blood, the Joker found that having his hand inside of someone's ribcage, over the heart where he could feel every frightened beat was a sensation unlike anything he'd felt before, and a welcome one. This must be how Aztec priests felt, but without the religious affiliation.

He tried squeezing the heart, first as quickly as he could, to see if he could throw it off rhythm, and then as hard as he could, to see if he could stop it permanently. When that failed to do any damage—though it did provide the most interesting thrashing, he simply resorted to pumping it to the beat of a song—"Achy Breaky Heart," it seemed fitting—as he sang, his free hand retrieving the scalpel from the floor once again.

The spray of blood when he brought the blade down shot out with enough force to knock the Joker backwards, flooding his mouth and nose. It was only after he hacked up what he hadn't swallowed, lying back and admiring the new, haphazard paint job on the ceiling, that he wondered what the odds were of the average Arkham guard carrying HIV.

Oh well. If a blood test wasn't exciting, what was the point?

He watched until the body stopped twitching, then opened the door and asked the men to clear out the mess. Ballard earned a pat on the back—and a bloodied handprint to match—for finding such a quantity of amphetamine under such short notice. Then he made his way past them to the bathroom, where he closed the door, took a few deep breathes, and shattered the mirror by driving his fist into it.

"Well," he said to no one, wiping shards of glass from his glove and into the sink, "that wasn't very entertaining at all, was it?"

* * *

AN: "Don't feel much like a scarecrow today" is a lyric from Bob Dylan's "Black Crow Blues."

_The Gift of Fear _by Gavin de Becker is a real book. It's about how our sense of fear protects us and why it's important to trust your instincts.

The guns the Joker lists were all weapons he used in TDK. _Caligula _is a film from the seventies about the Roman Emperor of the same name, that was meant to have all the steaminess of a Penthouse movie combined with all the serious extravaganza of the typical Hollywood historical film. How'd it turn out? Well, in the words of Roger Ebert: ""_Caligula_" is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash. If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful: People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this travesty. Disgusted and unspeakably depressed, I walked out of the film after two hours of its 170-minute length."

I imagine the Joker would get a kick out of it. Also, as I mentioned in TDATNTAMS, Caligula and I share a birthday, so he's been on my mind lately.

"Wilhelm" is, of course, named for the "Wilhelm Scream." If you've ever watched movies or television ever, chances are you've heard the famous Wilhelm scream. See just a few examples of it here: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=cdbYsoEasio


	14. Looking Forward

AN: It seems that, at least at this point in the semester, the schoolwork isn't quite as overwhelming as I'd feared, mostly because about half of the reading assignments are turning out to be unnecessary. And yet my evenings are just as full as I'd predicted anyway, because my friends keep having movie nights. On the plus side, I've now seen _Caligula, _and to my surprise, apart from the pointless sex scenes, I really enjoyed it. Last night was my first viewing of _Batman and Robin_, which is kind of pathetic considering that I've owned the DVD for almost a year.

Speaking of movies, I'm going to a Cillian Murphy movie marathon at a friend's house tomorrow, so I probably won't get any writing done. Happy early Labor Day, for those in the States!

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

Sometimes Lucy wasn't sure if Thomas realized that Dr. Crane was gone.

Granted, it had only been a few days the escape—though the emotional strain was already eating away at _months _of weight gain—and she didn't see much of the schizophrenic outside of the rec room, but still. He'd yet to show much outward reaction toward the disappearance of his former doctor, and Lucy wasn't sure if that was a symptom of his mental condition or if he was just blissfully unaware of Dr. Crane's absence. What she wouldn't give not to realize that the man who'd helped her through her own issues was lost in the city with no help of his own. And with only a terrorist to keep him company.

Thomas, who had opted to draw today instead of assembling another puzzle, hadn't acknowledged her company. Lucy would have taken that as a hint to leave if Thomas were paying attention to anyone or anything else in the rec room. But since she'd come in, he hadn't looked up from the paper, other than the occasional glance up for reference.

_He's not a bad artist_, Lucy had to admit, leaning over Thomas's shoulder to glance at the drawing. He was recreating the wall of the rec room in front of them, which was blank apart from the television and the windows, but despite the lack of inspiration, he recreated it well. She supposed he was as disinterested by the empty, off-white walls as the rest of the patients, because Thomas had taken to scribbling thick, brightly colored crayon zigzags around the few objects on the page.

"You used to talk more."

Startled, Lucy pulled back and ended up slamming her shoulder blades against the couch. _Great. _Because her life didn't have enough problems already, now she could add bruising to the list. "I –what?"

"You used to talk more." He pulled the violet and purple crayons from the pack, staring back and forth between the two as though the world would end if he didn't choose just the right shade. "When you sat by Dr. Crane. You were always trying to get him to say something."

Thomas, thankfully, was still preoccupied with his crayon dilemma, so he missed the vibrant shade of red Lucy could feel burning on her face. So she'd been so obvious that even the man who couldn't discern when puzzle pieces didn't match had picked up on it. Fantastic. The only thing her attempts to reach Dr. Crane had resulted in was absolute humiliation, apparently. "Sorry. I didn't want to interrupt you."

He put the violet crayon back in the box and began another jagged line in purple. "I like it more when you talk."

"Oh." The fire was back in her cheeks again. "Thanks."

"You're going to talk to Dr. Crane when he comes back, right?" So Thomas _had_ noticed his absence. Assuming he didn't believe that Dr. Crane was just taking an especially long bathroom break, or something else as equally absurd. "I don't think he liked talking to the Joker all that much. He was weird afterward."

But he'd _responded _to the Joker, which was more than she could say for their own conversations. "I don't think he liked talking to me, Thomas."

And that was the statement that got him to raise his head away from the paper, eyes dark and wide and unblinking, which was more than a little discomforting. "He likes talking."

Maybe he did in Thomas Schiff's world, in which voices in the head were commonplace and in which poking people in the ribs until they spoke to you was equivalent to a pleasant conversation. In Lucy's world, in which months of attempts to coax a word out of the doctor, or even just to support him in his time of need had been met with blank stares and silence, it was hard to have that conviction. "I'll talk to him when he comes back." _If he comes back._

"He's a doctor," Thomas muttered. She couldn't tell if he was addressing her or speaking to himself. "Doctors like to hear people talk."

What she wouldn't give to believe that all of her inane chatter toward Dr. Crane since his commitment had made an impact. Given him some sense of order again, and shown him that even though he'd lost his license, there were still people who recognized his talent and understood his skill. But her ramblings hadn't accomplished that. She may not have Dr. Crane's psychological insight or his intellect, but she could read body language, and Lucy had never made him anything but uncomfortable.

_I should have just told him that I still respected him. That I cared. Should have come out and said it instead of talking in circles._ It was the furthest thing from an uplifting remark that her mind had conceived all day, and it did nothing to counter the depression that had been growing inside her ever since Dr. Crane's escape, but Lucy found it gave her an odd resolve all the same. It wasn't an opportunity she'd allow herself to miss again. If—_when _Dr. Crane returned, she'd be there for him again, and this time, she'd let him know it.

* * *

The Gotham Times still had some semblance of restraint, at least. While "ARKHAM ORDERLY SLAIN, POLICE SUSPECT JOKER" was an alarmist headline if ever there was one, the article itself was thankfully more low key. They'd been spared loving details of the gory crime scene, for example. Ruth imagined the sensationalist mess the evening news would make of this and resolved to keep her television unplugged until the Joker was back in custody. Maybe a few weeks after that as well for good measure.

"Well," she began, putting the paper front page down on the desk to cover up the article, "at least he's not bothering to cover his tracks." Making light of a murder—the murder of a fellow employee, no less—was about as cold and heartless as it got, but as anyone who worked in Arkham Asylum could attest, it was hard to make it through even an ordinary day without a heavy dose of dark humor.

Joan, who had probably scoured the article for details a good thirty times by now and torn a few hairs out over it besides, didn't crack a smile. "They can't even be sure that it's him."

"How many murderers nail their victims to the floor and then dissect them while they're still conscious?" Of course, this was Gotham City. So probably more than she cared to think about.

It looked as though Joan didn't care to think about the horrific tortures the Joker was capable of inflicting. _Way to go, Ruth. _As if she didn't have enough to worry about without the fear that her patient was going to be a part of the Joker's demented science experiment.

"Hey." She cast about for a change of subject, so of course every other topic of discussion in the world chose that moment to go out of her head. "Uh, the coroner said he had amphetamines in his system, didn't it?"

Joan gave her a blank stare. "What?"

"The orderly in the article." She felt a twinge of guilt for forgetting the name of a murdered coworker, even if it was a coworker she'd never personally met. Regardless of what he'd done to incur the Joker's wrath, he was still a human being and deserved to be treated as one. "It mentioned amphetamines."

"Enough to take down a horse. Why?"

"Wasn't Jonathan supplying drugs before he was arrested?"

It was a tenuous link at best and she knew it. The Joker's thugs were assembled from Gotham's lower classes, where both mental illness and substance abuse ran rampant. It would hardly be a stretch to say that one of his men could have put him in contact with a supplier, and judging from the reports of tainted drugs the last time Jonathan was loose in the city, he wasn't in the best standing with the dealers in the first place. But sometimes people deserved more than the truth, and if Joan wasn't one of those people, Ruth wasn't sure who could possibly qualify.

Joan, to her relief, did look mildly comforted by the idea, and Ruth cast about for a new topic of conversation before her coworker could think of the myriad of flaws in that theory. "How long do you think these inquiries are going to last?" The comprehensive staff and patient interviews Bruce Wayne had demanded were scheduled to start tomorrow. Ruth expected the experience to be about as brief as it was helpful.

"God." Joan rubbed her temples, but at least she didn't look on the verge of tearing up anymore. "The better question would be, are we going to have any security staff left by the time they're gone?"

"They can't fire everyone." Even Bruce Wayne couldn't be that stupid. True, blowing up Gotham General had left hundreds of medical personnel out of work, but out of them, only a handful had worked in the psychiatric ward, and even those employees would be unprepared for Arkham Asylum. There weren't many institutions like this one, not even in Gotham City. Thank God.

"Maybe it would be better if they did," Joan muttered. She gave the cup of coffee in front of her a wistful glance, but made no move to lift it, drained of energy. It was a feeling Ruth knew all too well, and more and more intimately as the days passed. She could only imagine how things were going for the GPD right now, and the thought of all the angry calls the police department must be receiving—even here, the phones were still ringing off the hooks—was enough to make her head ache in sympathy.

Everyone else was in the break room now, no doubt spreading the latest gossip about the murders or the police investigation. Maybe a few were sitting in silence, mourning their dead friends, but she doubted it. There was no space for silence in the break room these days, no space to think, and there hadn't been since she and Teresa and Arkham had found the Joker's cell empty. Hence why she and Joan were taking refuge in her office. It didn't make their lives any less stressful, but it did provide a much-needed respite from the noise.

"They'll sort it out," Ruth said, plastering a small but hopefully confident smile on her face. As if the GPD had ever demonstrated competence rather than relying on a murderer in a bat costume to do the work for them. "By the time the police track them down, it'll be a whole new asylum."

It wasn't entirely a lie. It was a given that Arkham would have to change if it wanted to stay afloat. But Ruth could envision the asylum becoming a haven for the mentally ill about as well as she could picture the Joker learning to value human life. Some things just didn't happen.

* * *

"Think we'll have to talk to the cops again?"

Linda bit down on her lip to keep from answering aloud. _I think I should have brought earplugs._ It was just her luck. The one day she filled in for a coworker—Teresa had better appreciate this sacrifice, wherever she was—and it just had to be the day when the infirmary was emptied of patients and the doctor didn't come in until after noon. Elizabeth had taken an early lunch, leaving Linda alone with the most talkative intern in the history of Arkham Asylum, and probably the United States, if not the world. "About what?" She managed to keep both the fatigue and the annoyance from her voice, which was more than she'd though herself capable of.

Harleen Quinzel—she'd insisted on Harley, but Linda wanted to be on a first name basis about as much as she wanted to deal with an epidemic of the stomach flu—had shown up right around the time Elizabeth had gone, complaining of a headache that the chatter of the break room was only making worse. The headache, Linda could believe. Quinzel was the third victim of the breakout to come face to face with the Joker and make it out alive, the first being an orderly and the second being Linda herself. But while Linda's assault had only left a small bruise, Quinzel's head trauma had led to mild swelling and a massive blotch of black and blue that her foundation barely covered. It had to hurt like hell. But if noise was the problem, Linda couldn't help but think the intern would be far better off if she'd just _shut up._

Which she hadn't since she walked in, apart from the brief pauses in which she allowed Linda to speak. "About the staff interviews that Wayne guy's making the board set up. I mean, I know they haven't spoken to us—well, to me, they might have talked to you—about our jobs here, not really, but we've talked to them so much in the past few days anyway about the Joker. I'd say we deserve a Get Out of Jail Free card."

Linda was inclined to agree, but she wasn't about to let on that they had anything in common. Encouraging this conversation could only end badly. On an average day, Linda could deal with an overly talkative psychiatrist. But she hadn't had an average day since the Joker had come bursting into the infirmary covered in blood, and she didn't have the patience for it now. "I doubt that's going to happen."

Quinzel sighed, swinging her legs off the side of the desk—who sat on top of someone else's desk?—and being quiet for what was possibly the first time in her life. "This is a strange place, Linda."

She'd been here for what, two months? Linda seemed to remember that at some point in the rambling monologue that had been Quinzel's introduction. She couldn't have been here long, if she was clingy in conversation, unless she'd either alienated everyone—unlikely, as people with bubbly personalities tended to be popular regardless of lax adherence to social norms—or she was desperate to make friends, which Linda doubted. The intern didn't seem to mind the impression she made on Linda, just that Linda was there to talk to. Had Linda rejected her outright, she imagined Quinzel would have picked up on it and moved onto someone else. But that was beside the point. Even if she'd only been here for a few weeks, she must have realized what the asylum was like before its most dangerous resident slammed her into a wall. "You've just now noticed?"

Quinzel giggled. Linda grabbed her purse from under the desk and started rifling through it for an aspirin. "Not hardly. That's why I came here in the first place."

"So you could be assaulted by mental patients?"

She laughed again. "So I could work with severe cases. Make a bigger impact, you know?"

That would be the only reason any intern would choose Arkham Asylum. That, or a complete lack of other prospects. "You weren't turned off by the mass breakout?"

"Not really." With anyone else, Linda would have taken that as a saving face. But Quinzel, despite her airheaded manner and faint but utterly distracting Jersey accent, still managed to put enough conviction in the words to make her think otherwise. "If I'm going to take on patients, I want a challenge, you know?"

"Then I guess you made the right choice." It occurred to Linda that this was becoming dangerously close to a real conversation, but she didn't have the energy to put an end to it. Besides, her own lunch break started as soon as Elizabeth got back, and that would only be another ten minutes. She could last that long without snapping. Probably.

"What about you?"

Of course there was no aspirin in the purse. She supposed she could just walk over to the cabinet and take some from there, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. "What?"

"What about you? I mean, you didn't leave. What's keeping you here?"

It wasn't something Linda had ever sat down and thought about, if only because thinking about Arkham would lead to even more profound depression than working there. Why was she still here? Job security, for one, though the pay was exactly what one would expect from a struggling state hospital. Her friends there, though she tended to work the night shift, and alone. Getting to sleep in would be a plus if it didn't mean dealing with mental patients until the crack of dawn. "For the patients." Though considering how much the asylum had failed its patients up to this point, she had to wonder if she'd made any difference at all.

Quinzel's smile was much too bright and happy for the circumstances, but it was genuine. "See? We've got that in common."

Not hardly.

* * *

AN: Thomas drawing jagged lines around his pictures is based on the artwork of Louis Wain, an artist who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and who was famous for his paintings of cats. Wain was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, and as the disease progressed, his cat paintings were said to become more bizarre and disjointed until they hardly resembled cats at all. Whether this was an effect of schizophrenia (or if he even had schizophrenia) or simply artistic experimentation is up for debate, but either way, I like his art, and so it's referenced here. You can see examples of his work here: www. schizophrenia. org/ artist. Html

Since I included Harley in this chapter, I'd thought I'd take the time to mention something I've noticed about the fan reaction to her, particularly in Nolanverse fiction. (I'll try to keep this from becoming a rant.) Harley's been one of my favorite Batman characters ever since I was a little girl, so I'm biased in her favor, but I can understand why some fans don't like her. She's very silly and energetic and a lot of other things that could easily annoy fans, and of course everyone's entitled to their opinion. However, as of late I've been seeing more and more arguments that she's too dumb to be the Joker's partner, or too goofy, that she's a misogynistic character due to her abusive relationship, or that the she detracts from the Joker's character. People who make these arguments **don't understand her character. **At all. I know that I'm biased, but canon itself has shown Harley to be a resourceful, cunning woman who will manipulate the situation to get what she wants, even against her beloved Mr. J. Harley is a lot of things, but a bimbo isn't one of them, and I hate to see her reduced to that in the fandom. It's one thing to dislike a character, and it's another to write her off as worthless when the source material so strongly says otherwise.

This author's note would be several pages long if I offered all my arguments in favor of Harley Quinn, so instead I'll link to more articulate essays in defense of her character: "Harley Quinn: A Masochistic Bimbo Who Screwed Her Way Through College" (lovedatjoker. livejournal. com/ 28475. html), "All That And A Bag of Chips: Harley Quinn" (lovedatjoker. livejournal. com/33946. html), and "A Cartwheel of Contradictions: Who Is Harley Quinn?" (lovedatjoker. livejournal. com/43317. html). In fact, read any Harley essay on Love Dat Joker. They're all brilliant. Alternately, if reading massive essays isn't your thing, try to track down the animated series episode "Harlequinade" online. If ever there's an episode that shows how intelligent and manipulative Harley is, it's "Harlequinade."


	15. Home

AN: Merciful Zeus, this chapter's been delayed. I'd like to say that's due to my workload from all my classes, but the truth of the matter is that I've been slacking on that too, because for the past week and a half I've been sick. I had what started as a bizarre sore throat (you know things are bad when the doctor tells you your symptoms aren't normal and if you get them again, you should see a specialist) which then turned into a head cold, though it came with aches and general weakness like the flu. I also had what I can only describe as fever dreams, despite never actually having a fever. The cold is slowly fading away now, though I'm still stuck with the misery of the cold sores that seem to pop up whenever I'm sick. Still, things seem to be on the mend (though I made the dubious choice of having campus tuna for lunch, so for all I know I'm about to come down with food poisoning), so here I am. I'm sorry this story as a whole is taking so long.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

Pressing against his ribs, even gently, was enough to send sparks flying across the Joker's vision.

He discovered this in shower in between trying to scrub trying to scrub off the blood—Wilhelm's, on his face and throat where it had dripped down, and his own on his hand, from punching the mirror—and trying to scald the first few layers of his skin off. After all, if he couldn't gain satisfaction through revenge, he might as well wash his hands off the whole thing, so to speak.

But the water, even at full heat, offered no peace of mind, no moment of respite. Nothing but increasingly reddened skin. So the Joker was left with nothing more to do than struggle with a bar of soap that refused to lather—probably laughing at his attempts, with whatever rudimentary brain a toiletry could possess—and that was when he'd discovered the new and mildly entertaining agony in his side.

After a few minutes and five more meteor showers contained within his eyes, the Joker decided that if he didn't stop, he was likely going to shove a rib into his lungs, and while that would probably be the best he'd felt all week, it would lead to health ramifications that couldn't be shrugged off or treated with a box of Hello Kitty Band-Aids.

The Joker couldn't remember a time in his life when he hadn't enjoyed pain.

It wasn't, to his knowledge, a cause and effect relationship. Granted, trying to recall the early parts of his life was like watching a VHS tape that had been filming a channel during a storm, with the station cutting in and out every few seconds. A tape that was a copy of a copy of a copy, _ad nauseam_, until what little images that had come through had been rendered fuzzy and incomprehensible. Still, from what he did remember, his body had always been wired this way. It wasn't as if he'd cut his hand slicing vegetables one day and all of a sudden, pain had become pleasurable.

_Would Ruthie understand that?_ Why his ex-psychotherapist came to mind when he'd been striving to place an all-out mental shunning on Arkham Asylum, the Joker neither knew nor cared to contemplate. As Ruth hadn't been an orderly, and therefore the thought of her didn't make him foam at the mouth—not much, anyway—he allowed himself to consider it without slamming his head into the nearest solid, planar surface. She had picked up on "self-mutilation from boredom" fairly quickly, though he had provided one of his brilliant metaphors, and she'd frowned on that method of handling tedium for no good reason.

No, Ruthie wouldn't understand the pain thing. She'd go on about associations and childhood traumas and pain as an indicator of damage and blah blah blah. Maybe paraphilias, but Ruth tended to avoid the topic of sex around him. Possibly out of jealousy, since she didn't seem like a prude. But regardless of Ruthie's own sexual frustrations or hang-ups, she wouldn't understand.

Pain wasn't something that he sought out. If the Joker was going to inflict pain on himself, it would be out of necessity—say, dislocating the thumbs to slide out of handcuffs or digging at the Bat-wounds to make sure they scarred—or boredom, like now. Self-mutilating as a result of emotional upheaval, that was pathetic, and more than a little disgusting. Beyond that, it was beneath him.

It was a crutch, an inability to deal with the absurdity of existence. The Joker prided himself on—well, everything, but particularly his talent for seeing the world exactly as it was. No one else, not even the Batman, was able or willing to acknowledge that. And that in itself was a part of what made pain—pain inflicted by others—so much fun. It was amusing, watching people revert to the true selves that they tried to keep hidden under the guise of being civilized, having a social order. It didn't take much more than a few murders or taunting words, and the people that claimed to have the moral high ground were slamming his head into reinforced glass. Oh, hypocrisy. _How I love thee._

And beyond the delicious irony, pain just felt _good_, provided his body wasn't completely overloaded with it.

Ruth would call it suicidal ideation. Or a manifestation of subconscious self-loathing. Some psychiatric term with a lot of syllables, something completely meaningless under the scholarly talk. He imagined she'd prescribe him anti-depressants and talk at him about the value of life. Even if his life would be spent locked up in a padded cell. Did Ruthie ever realize just how hilarious her arguments were?

He shook his head, sending flecks of water over the mildewed tiles and shower curtain like a dog coming in from a storm. What Ruth thought didn't matter. There was a more pressing concern at the moment, and that was the possibility of his ribs collapsing into several vital organs at any moment. Granted, that would be a much more interesting way to die than a heart attack or blood poisoning or drinking antifreeze, but it would also mean dying of wounds inflicted by Arkham orderlies, and that was unacceptable. He'd have to force himself to resurrect in such circumstances, regardless of the sorry state his innards would be in. The Joker didn't care if each breath would have him spewing blood and shards of bone.

It was the principle of the thing.

His body was still black and blue on every available inch of skin that wouldn't be visible in the asylum uniform. Dealing with struggling captives hadn't helped in that regard. Maroni's men weren't exactly lightweights and the orderlies tended to put up a hell of a fight when they realized blades or nail guns were pushing against their flesh. Beyond the splintered ribs, he was sporting a chipped tooth, scrapes and scratches over all of his body where Hadley had fought back, but the hands in particular, likely more hairline fractures on his arms and legs, and more bruises than a battered women's shelter could swing a baseball bat at.

This was probably the sort of thing that other people went to doctors for.

Though really, there wasn't much a doctor could do besides bandage his ribs, and that was just as easily done here. And the Joker didn't relish the thought of dealing with a pair of overly cheery, overly talkative twins while their brother sat poking him in the ribs for a while before telling him everything he already knew. Especially since he'd left a certain scarecrow with them. By this point, they must have realized just how grating the ex-psychiatrist could be, and considering how un-cathartic today had been so far, the Joker wasn't in any mood to be guilt-tripped about making his "friends" crazy-sit, or to have said crazy re-gifted to him.

No, he'd bandage it himself. The afflicted ribs, as far as he could tell, were only cracked at the moment. Provided they were covered and he didn't let anyone touch them, things should go swimmingly. The Joker may not be the most graceful of physical fighters, but what he lacked in finesse, he made up for in cunning and creativity. He could keep himself covered. He had to, because he wasn't about to let an Arkham slow him down.

The Joker shook his hair out again, shutting the water off. If a few bruises had put Teresa on the edge of puking or fainting or both, he imagined his current state would cause cardiac arrest. Ruth, on the other hand, would shake her head and light a cigarette and probably accuse him of doing it to himself. But he didn't have time to focus on an ex-doctor's psychiatric failings. He had yet to achieve anything near catharsis, and as long as that was the case, he needed to try harder.

* * *

Everything Jonathan Crane had worked to achieve in his life was utterly meaningless. Well, that was uplifting.

At least, that seemed to be the message of the book the short-haired twin had brought him, the one regarding fear. Anika. He was almost entirely sure that the short-haired one with the hearing aids was named Anika, and he was absolutely certain that the twins had informed him of their names several times. But on occasion, it seemed as though her hair got far longer, or Abigail's much shorter, or her hearing aids looked more like large turquoise leeches, and it was hard to be sure.

Whatever her name was, the twin with the hearing loss had decided, for malicious purposes that probably involved psychological torture or credit card scams or something else that women who liked cooking and bothering their unwilling houseguests would enjoy. Against his better judgment, Jonathan had begun to read it, only to be informed of why fear was necessary for the survival of the species, how trusting one's neuroses could be life-saving.

When he'd worked to understand fear in order to eradicate it, Jonathan was sure he'd had several arguments against this type of thinking, and all of them convincing. They seemed to have gone out of his head at the moment, however, leaving him to feel ridiculed by a book on top of having his nails forcibly painted and trying to figure out if the sounds in the walls were from the vents or from a colony of man-eating rats and everything else.

"Scarecrow."

The short-haired one—Anika, he was declaring her, whether or not it was correct—was leaning out of her bedroom doorway, where she'd retreated when there were sounds of a fight from the streets outside. In the Narrows, that was business as usual. Though last Jonathan had checked, it was also normal to stay away from the street violence, in a room without windows or external doors. Such as the living room he was in now. Anika's bedroom, unless Jonathan had confused north and south or the house had changed its layout in the middle of the night, had a window facing the street. Maybe she was taking bets on the fighting. It really wasn't his concern.

"Scarecrow."

_I'm reading. _Was she blind as well as deaf? True, he hadn't been reading for the past five minutes—or perhaps it was more like an hour—since the book had given him profound depression and mild nausea, but she had no way of knowing it.

"You haven't been turning any pages. I know you're not reading."

Had he spoken aloud, or had she developed extrasensory perception? These people were bad enough without telepathy. He might just have to leave. There had to be a large cardboard box or a dumpster somewhere nearby. Potentially fatal residences to be sure, but at least there, he wouldn't have to talk to anyone. As far as Jonathan was aware, sewer rats had yet to develop language.

"Jon-a-than Crane." She drew out each syllable, footsteps reverberating across the floorboards as she walked toward him. The sound seemed disproportionately large in comparison to her size. "You need to get up."

"I disagree."

"Get up. You need to take the medication." She was bending down beside him, fingers lacing through his like a group of conjoined snakes, and she didn't even have the decency to apologize when he pulled away. "Come on, Scarecrow."

She hadn't even asked if she could touch him. What sort of idiot went around grabbing mental patients without permission? Well, Joan and Lucy had, but at least he'd had a professional relationship with the both of them before he'd been committed and they'd gone from merely annoying to unbearable.

These people made Arkham look favorable in comparison. If he could focus on anything but the hand squeezing his like a vice, Jonathan was almost positive that he would find that disturbing.

"Come _on_." She managed to give her voice the exact pitch and frequency of a power drill. Jonathan wondered if the pain of perforating his ear drums would be worth the silence afterward.

"I hope you have an unfortunate accident," he said. That, or "Can't you bring the pills in here?" It was impossible to be sure.

"No. I'm working. Come on."

He'd said the second one, then. That was probably in his best interests.

He allowed himself to be led. There was nothing preventing him from dragging his feet, or pointing out how much time she'd taken off of "working" to harass him about this in the first place, but the floor was moving up and down in little waves now, and he found that far more pressing of his concern.

"You can walk faster than that, Scarecrow."

It wasn't Anika's voice. She was much louder than that, particularly when she was close enough to make contact. Abigail was sitting on the bed, unless there was a third one of them that no one had introduced him to. He doubted that, if only because these two were incapable of leaving him alone. "That would be unwise."

They giggled. It sounded like someone running a cheese grater over aluminum foil. Abigail was shoving a glass of water into one of his hands—he considered breaking it out of principle—and the pills in the other. They weren't the kind of drugs he'd had at Arkham. Adrian, who apparently didn't give medications without explaining them to his patients, had assured him that the new antipsychotics and sedatives and whatever else they had did exactly what his old medications had done, and worked just as well, but that wasn't the point. It wasn't what he'd had at Arkham. And considering how much everything else in his life had disintegrated in the past year, was it too much to ask for the thing giving him control of his mind to stay consistent?

"Don't stand in front of the window." Anika took the glass from his hand once he'd finished, as though he suffered from palsy and couldn't be trusted to hold it. All right, so he'd been shivering slightly ever since the toxin exposure, but even the Arkham nurses had trusted him to hold things without stabbing himself.

"What's wrong with the window?" The shade was drawn. Perhaps there were ravenous wolves on the outside. Or maybe there was a draft.

"There's some kind of fight outside." Abigail grabbed the hand that Anika wasn't prying a drink from and dragged him to sit beside her on the bed. Wonderful. He'd lost all motivation for life, become depressed from a self-help book, and now he was at the mercy of a pair of not-quite perfect strangers, who were probably going to steal his liver, or send him to the police station in hopes of a reward. "We don't know if they have guns, but we're trying to avoid being in the range of any wayward bullets."

These women listened to people dying for fun. No wonder the Joker associated with them.

"Don't make that face, Scarecrow." Anika. She was giggling again. It made his head ache. "It's just that anyone injured out there is a potential customer."

"Why don't you move?" The apartment looked nice, when it wasn't moving or being covered with hostile-looking shadows. They clearly had money, enough that they could move to a better part of the city and take up jobs that didn't involve practicing medicine illegally.

"Move?" They looked at him as though he were the insane one. That, or they were considering grinding his bones to make bread. It was one of those expressions that could go either way.

"Why would we?" Abigail glanced at the window. There was either shouting or growling outside. "Stuff like that? Those people don't get in here. And anyway, this is our home."

He glanced at Anika's hearing aids. Someone had said those were from damage inflicted by an assailant, hadn't they?

"It's worth the risk to us," Abigail continued. "It might not make sense, but it's where we're comfortable, you know?"

Jonathan did not know. Staying a violent, dangerous part of any city—but particularly Gotham—because they were used to it was on par with keeping one's hand in a jar of acid because "it's been in there for so long anyway." What he did know was that the Joker had brought him to an apartment entirely populated by mad people, to the point that Arkham seemed like a summer home in comparison.

He opted to go back into the living room and let his sense of self be further deteriorated by a book.


	16. Funny Games

AN: So my two year writing anniversary is coming up this Tuesday (and, as with last year, I've got a one shot planned for it) and when I look at how much I accomplished in my first year of writing versus how much I've produced this year, the difference is staggering. Granted, with my schedule the way it is now, I doubt it would be possible for me to do that "chapter a day" that I had going with the first three fics and most of the fourth, but the fact that I've gone over two weeks without an update multiple times this year is definitely something that could be avoided, and I'm going to give it my all to keep it from happening again.

Thanks for the reviews, as always, and sorry for the delay in the replies!

* * *

"Maroni's out of the hospital."

If Darius were within striking range, Ballard would have knocked his teeth out. As it was, they were seated at opposite ends of the living room and short of removing a shoe, Ballard didn't have any projectiles. It wouldn't be worth the effort, and the damage was already done. He pushed himself back against the mildewed couch cushions, bracing himself for the sound of a gunshot.

There was only silence.

Ballard risked a glance into the kitchen.

The Joker wasn't even looking in their direction, stabbing at the contents of his bowl with a spoon. He'd woken Ballard up at three in the morning—opening his eyes to see the Joker's face hovering over him had almost stopped his heart and even now, eight hours later, Ballard wasn't sure it had gone back to a proper rhythm—with a shopping list and Ballard's own car keys, shoving him out of the bed. It was a testament to how long he'd been working for the clown that Ballard could track down a store that was not only open in the middle of the night, but that also carried a variety of items ranging from a box of Froot Loops to thirty-six tubes of toothpaste—the kid's kind with the sparkles, as the Joker had emphasized by underlining six times—and everything in between. The in between in this case was comprised of two five foot Ace bandages, disinfectant, smoked salmon, and a garlic press, which might have been the most bizarre item on the list if not for the fact that to Ballard's knowledge, the Joker had never used or possibly even seen a tube of toothpaste before.

He wasn't eating. That would have been normal if the cereal in question wasn't brightly colored. The Joker seemed to pick foods the same way toddler chose toys; he took whatever caught his attention and left whatever didn't lying where he found it.

"He can't be out yet." That was Ricky, who after two days and no sleep had been allowed to come off of the balcony, trading places with Tyson. Ballard still wasn't sure if the clown had kept him there for amusement, or if he'd just forgotten that he'd ordered the man to keep watch. "You saw what the boss did to him. He'd be in traction for months before he could even—"

"He's rich enough to have his own nurse," Ballard muttered, praying that would be the end of it. Just because the Joker wasn't having a violent reaction to the reminder of Maroni right now didn't mean that he wouldn't if they continued. If you happened to fall into the tiger cage at the zoo while the tiger was sleeping, you got the hell out of there. You didn't start poking the tiger with a stick.

"He won't be for long, if he's bedridden. If he's not out there giving orders—"

"So, uh, how'd you find ou_t_?"

This time, they all froze.

The Joker slunk into the room like a bizarrely-patterned house cat, twirling the spoon between his fingers. Behind the painted smile, his face was blank. Ballard might have considered taking refuge behind the couch if not for the fear that even moving would set the clown off. As things were now, the Joker was only making eye contact with Darius, and much as Ballard didn't want to see the man's head blown off, he'd also like to make it through this encounter with his own skull intact.

No one intervened when the Joker was involved. It was more than common sense; it was basic survival knowledge.

"_Dar_ius." The Joker didn't sit as much as collapse onto the loveseat, something like a smile spreading across his face. "Didn't you hear me? I'd really like to know your source."

Darius mumbled something all but inaudible.

The Joker, whose regard for his own personal space was high while his regard for everyone else's was nonexistent, draped himself over his shaking lackey, ear nearly pressed against the man's lips. "Come again?"

"Reese."

"Reese?" The clown sat back, tongue darting over his lips. "Reese like the candy?"

Darius shook his head, fingers digging into the cushion. "He works for Maroni. He—he didn't know I left, I don't think."

"You didn't bother to change your number before you went turncoat?"

Darius didn't answer. Ballard doubted he could have even if he wanted to. But the Joker's smile only stretched to the limit that the scars would allow. "This Reese guy—who may or may no_t _be affiliated with the candy-as-breakfast-cereal—does he have a wife?"

"No."

"A girlfriend?"

"Not unless he got one since I left."

"Anyone he's especially close to?"

"He's got a brother. A high schooler." Darius's eyes flickered across the room, meeting everyone else's gaze with a frightened, pleading look, as if they had the answers. As if anyone knew what was going on in the clown's head beside himself. And even that was up for debate. "I don't know anybody else."

The Joker pondered that, tapping the spoon against the arm of the loveseat. He stopped as abruptly as he'd begun, swinging one arm out and nearly swiping Darius across the face with it. "Lemme see your phone."

"What?"

"Your _phone._" He wiggled his fingers. "I wanna thank him for the information. Is that so wrong?"

"I—"

The Joker pulled it from his hand, flipping it open. Darius gave them that deer-in-the-headlights look again. No one responded. After a moment the Joker pressed the phone to his ear, listening. "Hello? Reese?...You wouldn't happen to be related to the peanut butter cup people, would you?" He listened, grimaced. "Yes, I'm serious, unfortunately…well, that's a shame. Anyway, just calling to ask if your refrigerator was running?"

Ballard felt his jaw drop. He didn't have to look around the room to know that the others were gaping just the same.

"No, no this is not a, uh, "fucking joke." It's not even a regular joke…Well, I was getting to tha_t_, if you'd let me. It's just that there isn't going to be much of your brother left by the time I'm _fin_ished, so I thought you'd want the bits and pieces back and they'd last longer in a fridge, but if yours isn't working, we could always use mine…Well, I'd have thought _that _was obvious. The Joker, that's who the hell this is. No, I'm not kidding...you can talk to him if you want. Here, say hello."

The Joker held the phone out with one hand and drove his spoon into Darius's leg with the other. He left it there, impaled through the man's jeans, as he dropped the phone, pulling a gun from his belt. Darius flinched, the clown throwing himself on top of the man to keep him from running, and the Joker fired the gun into the wall, clamping his free hand over Darius's mouth at the same time. He let the gun clatter to the floor and retrieved the phone from the cushions, settling back on his end of the couch.

"There, that was him. Emphasis on w_as_. Sorry to cut things short, but working with the hacksaw's _much _easier before the rigor sets in…Excuse me?...Well, if you're gonna be rude, then I'll go." He clicked the phone shut, surveying it with a look of deepest disapproval. "Some people just don't know how to hold a friendly conversation.

"Here you go, Darius." He dropped the phone onto Darius's lap and stood, pulling the spoon out as he did. Even having both his hands clamped over his mouth wasn't enough to fully muffle Darius's ensuing screams. "You're a doll."

He stalked out of the room, muttering under his breath that the peanut butter cups weren't even that good.

There was about a minute following the clown's departure in which everyone, save for Darius, who was still moaning into his hands, sat in silence, staring either at the doorway or at the blood soaking through Darius's jeans. When it became apparent that the Joker wasn't about to breeze back in, the silence gave what would have an uproar if anyone had raised their voices. But like a group of siblings who'd fought to the bleeding point and didn't want parents to find out, they kept their voices just above a whisper as they assessed the damage to Darius's leg.

Ballard stayed on the couch, contemplating.

Uncalled for, unexpected, and sadistic as it was, it was the most normal he'd seen the Joker since the man had broken into his apartment. The Joker's sense of humor hadn't changed, for all that seemed off since he'd returned to Arkham.

The first week or so with the clown had been almost normal, as strange as that seemed when he thought back now. Granted, when the Joker had found him, the Narrows was still saturated with toxin and resembled something out of a zombie film more than an ordinary slum, so normal there had been relative. Excessive force had been necessary against the Narrow's poisoned residents, and other looters tended to shoot first and ask questions later, so the Joker's brutality had, for the most part, slipped by unnoticed.

Granted, his other employers had never run around in clown makeup, but at the time, Ballard had written it off as a juvenile attempt to maintain anonymity. The Joker was clearly talented and obviously brilliant, but Ballard had been one of the few people to see him before he'd created this persona, and in the early days, it had been easy—and less disturbing—to write him off as a cocky child who just happened to be wildly skilled in his field. A kid who had played Cowboys and Indians one too many times growing up, who was under the impression that the law enforcement rode white horses and the evildoers identified themselves with black ski masks. Only he'd gotten bored with the ski mask and chosen a new disguise that not only concealed his face, but also drew the eye, flaunting his superiority over lesser adversaries. Attention-seeking. Ballard's niece did the same thing, and she was four.

Daring, yes. But also a good way to die. In those starting weeks, there were moments when he would look at the Joker—twirling knives or scribbling down his schemes in barely legible chicken scratch or waking Ballard up at two in the morning because he had a craving for chop suey and figured the more the merrier—and wonder how long it would be before the man ended up face down in a ditch with his brains blown out.

It wasn't until about three weeks into his time in the Joker's employ that he realized just how off the man he was working for was.

It wasn't that he didn't know the Joker was capable of killing his own men. Their first meeting in the alley had more than cemented that fact into his mind. But in a world of less than legal business practices, things could get ugly quick, and more often than not the case became kill or be killed. Likewise, the kid was clearly off in the head, but it had been so easy at the time to write that off as extreme overconfidence. It had been easy to write off everything in the early days. The money had been good and it was simpler not to question things.

The first time the questions had been unavoidable was the night the Joker had decided they needed frozen yogurt.

The clown went long stretches without eating, but when he did crave food, his cravings tended to be more bizarre than a pregnant woman's. Some of them didn't even constitute as food; once, during a pet food commercial while they were watching the news, the Joker mentioned offhand that he'd always thought clean cat litter, though only the kind with the blue specks in it, would taste delicious. That night, he'd had a craving for key lime sherbet, and as it was still a reasonable hour of the night, Ballard had no objection to accompanying him.

The Joker hadn't been wearing the face paint that night, or the trench coat. In the early days, his reputation was more urban legend than fact, and the only police report with a clear description of him—armed robbery, double homicide—had been filed before he'd had the purple suit, so he'd said. Without the makeup, he could pass for a scarred-up street punk with green hair, which, in the borders outside the Narrows, wouldn't have raised anyone's eyebrows.

Of course, the Joker's makeup had the added benefit of making him look far older and more intimidating than he did as a cut-up twenty-something, which was probably why they ended up at gunpoint by a would-be mugger who kept blowing his cigarette smoke in their faces as he demanded their valuables.

The Joker had put his hand on Ballard's wrist to prevent him from drawing his own gun, which should have been Ballard's first sign that something was wrong. The Joker wasn't one to avoid a confrontation, but up to this point, their confrontations had never required subtlety. It was the first time Ballard had been with the Joker when they weren't dealing with a toxin victim or holding an armed robbery of their own. He didn't know what he'd expected, but he hadn't expected what had happened.

He couldn't remember the exact conversation that had led up to the assault. Presumably, he'd blocked that out because he couldn't block what had happened next. At some point between the Joker's smirking and the demands for all the cash they had on them, their would-be assailant had noticed the Joker's hold on Ballard's wrist and misinterpreted it. "Fag. I said give it to me."

The Joker had giggled. "If you say so."

His hand had left Ballard's wrist then, and before Ballard could register what had happened, the Joker had moved, grabbed the man's cigarette, and extinguished it into his eye.

He'd gone down easily enough after that. The Joker hadn't stepped over him as Ballard had expected, hadn't left him there writhing on the sidewalk. Still giggling, he'd bent down, taken the cigarettes from the man's pocket and lit one, bringing it down against his skin. He did the same with the next, and the next, until the pack was empty and his victim covered in burns, the last cigarette going out against his tongue.

The Joker had all but skipped away after that, laughing so much that Ballard had to drag him into an alley before he continued, fearful that he'd attract attention and the cops, thinking he was under the influence of something, would take a closer look.

"Don't you get it?" The Joker had managed, in between the bursts of laughter. "He asked for a fag, didn't he?"

Once they'd retrieved the frozen yogurt he'd been so craving, he'd told a joke on the walk back, something about a three-legged dog walking into a saloon, and laughed just as hard at that as he had at brutal torture, as if there weren't a difference.

To the Joker, Ballard wasn't sure that there was.

The Joker hadn't laughed this time. It was his humor, just like always, but if he'd found it humorous, that was one hell of a poker face. Unless it was at his expense, the Joker had never _not _laughed at a joke, not that Ballard could remember, and to fail to laugh at one of his own antics…

Whatever Arkham Asylum had done to the Joker, it had made him more dangerous.

Ballard stood and walked into the kitchen. No one had thought to disinfect Darius's wound yet. The dish soap wasn't antibacterial, but it was better than letting the man's leg become gangrenous. Knowing the Joker, he'd consider amputation the first recourse, not the final.

But the Joker was standing over the sink when Ballard walked in, staring at bowl of cereal in his hands as though it had killed his parents. If he'd been amused by himself in private, then apparently he'd become a Vulcan in his time away, because there was no sign of on his face. "This wasn't very good," he said, either to Ballard or to himself.

"Sorry."

The Joker raised his head, regarding him without really seeing him. He'd spent enough time around the Joker to know when the clown's mind was on something else. "You want curry?"

It didn't matter if the answer was yes or no, because they'd be leaving to pick it up regardless. "Yes."

The Joker let the bowl fall into the sink. It crashed against the metal and from the sounds in the next room over, several men had jumped at the noise. "Great. Let's go."

* * *

AN: For those who don't have them, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are these candies that are basically peanut butter covered in chocolate. I hate them, but I hate chocolate mixed with anything and I don't like chocolate at all unless it's dark chocolate (or M&Ms, for some reason), so I'm probably not the best judge.

The joke that the Joker tells about the dog is an old one, and goes along the lines of "A three-legged dog walked into a saloon and sat down at the bar. He said, "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw.""

Vulcans from _Star Trek, _of course. They conceal their emotions like stoics.


	17. Negative Thoughts

AN: There I go, announcing that I'm not going to disappear for two weeks again and then disappearing for two weeks again. It's not that I don't have my reasons—reports, writing a short film, reading two novels in a week, etc.—but it's hard to make even that justifiable to myself when I look back on the way I used to write and then look at this and realize that it's been going on for months now without even hitting the twentieth chapter yet. Earlier in the week my friend gave me a tarot reading after I asked why I felt so lethargic about this fic, and you know it's bad when the person reading your cards sighs at the outcome. It went something like this:

Me: Is that the Death card?

Him: Yes.

Me: What does it mean when the Death card is upside down? Is that good?

Him: It means a lack of change. It means stagnation and dragging your feet.

Well, can't say that wasn't accurate. So today, once I'm through with this chapter, I am sitting down and planning out every last nuance of the rest of this story, so I'll have a roadmap to follow and no excuse when I deviate from it. Of course I'd arrive at this conclusion right before the "novel in a month" begins.

And now on a completely random side note, because I can't stop thinking about it and thus won't be able to start the chapter until I've asked, what's everyone's favorite Tarot card? Mine's Strength. If there's anything more awesome than holding a lion's mouth shut with your bare hands, I'd like to see it.

Thanks for the reviews, and your patience!

* * *

Joan, at least, was adjusting.

Ruth should have been happy at that. And that wasn't to say that she _wanted _her colleague to suffer; the past week of tears and panic and despondency had been heart-wrenching to witness, and made Ruth's own day that much harder to get through. Ruth, Joan, and Teresa had been the employees most affected by the breakout, excluding the deceased—and Strange, though he'd made it clear that he'd been grilled by the police to the point of nausea and didn't want to discuss anything related to breakouts or clowns or ex-psychiatrists ever again—and between their emotional upheaval and her workload, Ruth had had no time during her hours in the asylum to sort out her own feelings. It should have been a relief that Joan wasn't constantly on the verge of hysterics. And partially, it was.

But the other part was envious and irritated and every other negative emotion it could wrap its hands around. Joan had a precedent for this. Jonathan had gone missing before, and Joan had struggled then, too, both with fear for her coworker's safety and her attempt to wrap her mind around the fact that he'd tried to poison the entire city. She'd adjusted then, eventually, as she was doing now, and Jonathan had been returned, albeit months later. For Ruth, it had been almost as though things had returned to the status quo. Jonathan Crane the patient was near identical to Jonathan Crane the doctor—when medicated, anyway—both were quietly condescending, standoffish, and an all-around pain in the ass. Really, the only differences were his lack of patients and that his mental illness was labeled as such, instead of just an eccentricity.

But for Joan, who had been on something resembling friendly terms with the man, his return after half a year's absence must have seemed like a miracle. And Ruth supposed that after one miracle, it was easier to hope for another.

She didn't have that luxury. Hell, Ruth wasn't even sure if shewanted the clown back at all.

"It's going to be absolute chaos."

Ruth looked up from her notepad, which she'd meant to be filling with notes regarding her last patient's session. Instead, she'd succeeded in driving the pen through the several of the pages, and nothing else. Across from her, Joan was holding up the day's paper. She wasn't smiling, but at least she wasn't on the verge of a breakdown.

"Don't you think?"

_Chaos. _Ruth tried to push the Joker's philosophies from her mind. Why was today going to be chaos? The morning had progressed as always, without any sudden or unexpected change to the schedule—the patient interviews. This was the afternoon that the GPD and the board started the patient interviews. When the doctors had no sessions and all hell was sure to break lose in the interview rooms. How had she forgotten that?

Probably because an afternoon alone in her office meant an afternoon alone with her thoughts. She might have welcomed that under other circumstances. A time to think about her next course of action with a patient, a time to check up with others in the break room, or a time just to smoke and relax, and put the madhouse out of her mind for a few extra hours.

She managed a nod. There was no way this set up wouldn't end in chaos. Chaos that Ruth would much rather participate in than have an afternoon absolutely alone. And it would be alone. She'd finally responded to the phone calls from concerned friends and family—though, to be honest, much of those calls had been spent with the phone away from her ear until the panicked rambling on the other end stopped—and her notes and schedule remained as orderly as always. At least, as orderly as she could focus long enough to make them. And as so much of their time since the break out had been spent in the break room, it seemed that the Arkham staff had collectively run out of things to talk about. Which left Ruth alone, whether she was sitting by herself in her office or surrounded by coworkers.

Alone was not a prospect she favored.

"Bruce Wayne must be here by now," Joan went on, pouring creamer into her coffee. "How do you think he'll handle it?"

Bruce Wayne. The thought of the city's biggest embarrassment—costumed villainy notwithstanding—sitting in with the rest of the board for the day brought a smile to her face. "I think by the end of the day he'll have an equal number of death threats and marriage proposals, and that'll be the end of his donations."

It was the first thought that came into her head, and to her credit, it made Joan laugh. It only made Ruth's anxiety worse. Joking aside, the fate of the asylum more or less hinged on Wayne's continued support, and should the playboy decide that Arkham was not worth salvaging, or if it simply failed to maintain his interest beyond this initial crusade, it was all too likely that they would go under. And she'd never get the chance to treat the Joker again.

Assuming that, when he was recommitted, she'd be able to sit through a session without strangling him. It wasn't that she feared being denied his case—Arkham could try to hold her back, but she'd proven more than once that she could intimidate him into getting her way—just that, mental patient or not, she was furious with the clown. He'd been bad enough as a patient, and the only thing that had kept her from throwing up her hands and declaring him impossible was her intense desire to figure out what was going on inside his mind. He'd been every bit as intriguing as he was infuriating, and while he was here, that was enough to keep her going. Then he'd escaped right as she'd realized how brilliant he was under the irreverence, and in seven days, he'd slaughtered five people. Five people that she knew of. Probably more. And as far as Ruth was concerned, the blame was left on her shoulders, because she'd been blind to what was happening beneath the surface. She'd allowed herself to be misled, and people were dead as a result.

Small wonder that she wanted to wring his neck when next they met.

Still, he'd been her patient. And rage-inducing as their sessions had been, she'd enjoyed the experience, enjoyed trying to sort through the layers of madness and misdirection to find just what had gone wrong to create a person like this. And beyond her own curiosity, for all his murderous, sociopathic behavior, he was a _mental patient. _He needed to be here, not out on the streets wreaking havoc, and not in prison, where each and every inmate would be out for his blood.

"Maybe Wayne's got a thing for mental patients," Joan suggested, and Ruth felt a smile creep across her face in spite of herself.

"I certainly hope so."

* * *

Thomas Schiff's shoes were not, to an outsider's perspective, anything special. They were the same white canvas as any other Arkham inpatient's, scuffed and stained from years of use, and a few months of wear away from needing a replacement. To Thomas, at this moment, they were the most important thing in the world.

He'd given them thought before—Arkham's shoes, like its uniforms, were washed and sanitized after a patient left, and then passed on to the next one committed. Thomas liked to think that his shoes—Wallace, the left one was named, and the right varied between Logan and Margery Elaine—carried the residual memories of their previous owners, and he'd heard them whisper asylum secrets to each other back and forth in the night. They had always been a good pair of shoes, sturdy, if lacking in arch support, and for all they got up to after lights out, they never failed to be waiting faithfully at the foot of the bed when he woke up.

But it wasn't until now, when Thomas had only two options, staring at his shoes or talking to the police, that Thomas realized exactly how much Wallace and Margery Elaine had done for him and how much they required his attention in return. The shoes that came with the police uniform the Joker had given him had never been so caring, not when he was shot, not when he was kidnapped and almost killed, and not when the real police arrived for him later. Those shoes had been police shoes, conspirator's shoes. These shoes had his best interests in mind and it was time he gave them his undying devotion in gratitude.

"Mr. Schiff?"

It was a member of the board, Thomas knew, though he couldn't, if pressed, say who, or what the board did, or even what room they were in. That information had gone out of his head the instant that Elizabeth had led him in here and he'd looked around to find that he was surrounded by the police—the ones who had questioned him after the funeral parade and who, unlike the Joker had promised, hadn't found the whole thing funny at all—and the board, and Bruce Wayne, that guy who was always on magazine covers and news reports, either due to lots of alcohol, or women who didn't wear a lot of clothing, or both. It was usually both. Thomas didn't trust himself to raise his head again. When people asked him questions, he tended to end up with guns pressed against his head. Well, to be accurate, something Dr. Adams was always urging him to do better despite his best efforts, that had really one happened once, but that once stood out more than any other time.

"Did you understand the question?"

Thomas had no idea what the question had been. He doubted anyone would be happy if he said so, so he concentrated on his shoes. They weren't giving him much to concentrate on. After all, they only spoke at night.

"Thomas?"

That was Dr. Arkham's voice. Dr. Arkham, who had taken Dr. Crane's job away and locked him up in here because, in Dr. Crane's words, they said he had been mean to the patients. That was the day Thomas had decided he didn't like Dr. Arkham, and now, it seemed that if he gave the wrong answer, which he was almost certain to, that he could be likewise accused of being mean to the police or the board or Bruce Wayne, that guy who was always on magazine covers and television, sometimes for alcohol, sometimes for women who didn't wear a lot of clothing, and sometimes for both. He wasn't sure what privileges he would lose, but he didn't want to risk it.

"Mr. Schiff?"

It was a voice Thomas didn't recognize, and he raised his head.

It was the rich one who they were always going on about on talk shows. Thomas remembered watching one while he was at the Joker's house, something about the ballet and how Bruce Wayne had prevented it, and boats. Maybe he'd taken the dancers hostage. Whatever he'd done, Thomas was stuck staring at him, and now that they'd made eye contact, it would be rude not to answer. One of the police was sitting to Bruce Wayne's right, the woman who kept coming in to see Dr. Crane after he'd stopped asking Thomas to bring him pills. "Is Dr. Crane coming back soon?"

"Do you know where he is?" Bruce Wayne asked.

Thomas shook his head, which broke his eye contact and allowed him to look back down at his shoes without committing an etiquette _faux pas_. After another few minutes in which no one said anything except "Thomas" or "Mr. Schiff" in tones of concern and exasperation, he was allowed to go back to the rec room, where he was able to assemble three-fourths of a puzzle before running out of the pieces in that box. In Arkham, that was a new record.

* * *

Bruce Wayne.

They wanted Lucy to go in there, sit down, and talk about her experiences in Arkham, in front of _Bruce Wayne._

It had been pizza day in the asylum's cafeteria, and she'd had a hard enough time struggling to get that greasy mess of empty calories down in the first place. Now, she had to struggle to keep it from coming back up. Bruce Wayne. In Arkham Asylum. In the same room as her. On a day when she'd consumed God only knew how much fat, and was probably already breaking out from the oil.

Not that Bruce Wayne would glance her way on her best day. And as if being interrogated about life in Arkham wasn't nerve-wracking enough. This was like a bizarre mash-up of good cop, bad cop, and _The Bachelor, _and Lucy had the distinct feeling that she'd walk away from each game empty-handed.

"They said they didn't know when Dr. Crane was coming back," Thomas told her, as he tried to fit a jigsaw piece decorated with Dalmatian spots into a puzzle of a barn.

Dr. Crane? She was going to have to discuss her relationship with Dr. Crane? Just like that, the temperature in the rec room went up by about a hundred and twelve degrees and the floor started to tilt. "Wh-what did they ask about him?"

"They didn't." Thomas shrugged. "I did."

That hardly helped. She had no idea what to expect from this conversation and she doubted asking Thomas would help. Judging by Elizabeth's barely contained grin when she'd brought Thomas back in, his interview hadn't been anywhere near productive. What were they going to ask her about? Lapses in policy that she'd seen? Inappropriate behavior? What if she phrased something poorly and an innocent nurse or orderly—or even a doctor—lost their job because of her faulty testimony? And how many employees were going to disappear as a result of the interviews? How many of them would deserve it?

The room hadn't stopped tilting. It felt as if she was going to slide off the edge of the world.

_Breathe._

Lucy closed her eyes. It was a command Dr. Crane had always given when she was on the edge of a panic attack, and though it should have been common sense, there was something about the way he instructed it that had always made it seem novel. _Breathe, Lucy. Let whatever you're dealing with wash over you. You can handle it. It won't knock you down._

Elizabeth opened the door to the rec room, holding it open in front of her. "Lucy? They're ready for you."

Lucy fainted, retaining consciousness only long enough to be glad that she was lucky enough to be sitting on the couch as she collapsed.

* * *

AN: _The Bachelor _is this ridiculous American reality show—then again, they're all ridiculous—in which women compete to marry a man. I don't even know.


End file.
